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bin Laden and his band of Islamists misread history when it comes
to American fortitude to see a war to a successful conclusion.
Our enemies
and their stooges in America's intelligentsia have questioned whether
we have the wherewithal to see a bloody war through. Would the American
people lose heart once the body bags started coming home or if progress
was slow or hard to track? Does a nation that entertains itself
with trivia game shows, "reality" TV, nonstop coverage
of sports and business (Even work has become play!) have what it
takes to win a unique war of cat and mouse?
We didn't ask
for war, but our enemies in Islamic terrorist networks have been
preparing for and prosecuting a war against us for years. America
faces a challenge no less monumental than World War II or the Great
Depression.
The terrorists
apparently took the wrong war as their example of what to expect
of Americans. They seemed to have latched on to the Vietnam War.
Yes, the American people's support for that cause waned. However,
that slippage came more than a decade after the first U.S. involvement
in Vietnam.
President Eisenhower
sent military advisers to Vietnam, with President Kennedy escalating
U.S. commitment even more. President Johnson jacked up our military
presence after securing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — a substitute
for a formal declaration of war.
By the time
of the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Nixon administration's taking
the reins of a quagmire, a bare majority and then a plurality of
public opinion supported President Nixon's policy of seeking withdrawal
of U.S. troops under something approximating "peace with honor."
The Vietnam
War repeated the flawed prosecution of the Korean War. There, President
Truman went to pains to keep from fighting an all-out war. He purposely
did not seek a declaration of war, called it a "police action"
and wrapped our involvement in the cloak of the United Nations.
He tied military leaders' hands, prohibiting Gen. Douglas MacArthur
from calling airstrikes across the Yalu River into China —
despite the presence of Communist Chinese troops in the field.
The American
public became increasingly ambivalent about that war, just as it
did about Vietnam a decade and a half later. The public recognizes
when politicians are sacrificing the lives of their children, fathers,
brothers and friends with no commitment to victory.
Americans won
the battles in the field in Vietnam, displaying the uncommon valor
we have come to expect as common. But the armed forces were constrained
from fighting to annihilate North Vietnam. The military could not
take the war to the enemy's refuges in Laos and Cambodia —
because the politicians in Washington kept its hands tied.
Americans are
not a warring people, but we always are willing to finish what we
start — assuming we have a clear goal and it's evident that
our leaders are fighting to win. When it came to war, Franklin Roosevelt
mobilized the nation, unleashed the full force of our military might
and didn't stop the fighting until all enemies had surrendered on
our terms.
In the present
conflict, Americans have shown the character of the Revolutionary-era
Minutemen. The Minutemen had crops to harvest, chores and commerce
to attend to and families to feed. Yet they sprung into action when
duty called. Their descendants inspire us with their quiet, determined
devotion to duty and country.
The land of
individualism stands virtually united by the wanton acts of Sept.
11. Even Corporate America, including many companies too politically
correct, upon the challenge of Ralph Nader, to recite the Pledge
of Allegiance at their meetings, has caught the patriotic spirit.
Do we have
the stomach to see this war through past the Afghanistan phase?
Perhaps the best answer is found in the conduct of the average Americans
who found themselves on hijacked flights on what began as a normal,
late summer day. Todd Beamer and the brave passengers on United
Flight 93, who jumped the hijackers and crashed the plane in Pennsylvania,
knew it might cost them their lives. But, opposite the hate-filled
zealots who crashed their airplanes into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, Beamer and the others gave their own lives in
order to save innocent lives. How typically American.
This war is
unlike any we have known. It's comprehensive, yet hard to track
progress. It will be long and hard. It involves military, intelligence,
law enforcement, legal, financial, economic, and diplomatic means.
Our enemies
should make no mistake. The American people stand determined to
extirpate the heartless evil that uses the barbaric tactics of uncivilized
hordes. We know it will cost lives. It already has.
As our nation
mobilizes against this threat, we have a commander in chief who
is prepared to fight to win. The American people will support that
kind of fight, even though it may get bloody. In the eloquent words
of one of our new national heroes, Todd Beamer, "Let's roll."
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