Holding our nerve in Iraq

America's surrender lobby has won a vote in the US Congress to demand that a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq should commence in October. The Democratic majority has won a vote - but it cannot yet lose the war. President George W. Bush has announced that for only the second time in his presidency he will invoke his right of veto.

There is nothing of value to be gained by a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, and that in the end is what Congress is proposing, notwithstanding the protests of Senate Leader Harry Reid to the contrary. Since the mid-term elections last November which delivered a Democratic majority in Congress, and the disastrous Baker-Hamilton report last December, which urged a swift withdrawal from Iraq, American "progressive" opinion has been doing its best to convince the world that the United States has lost the stomach for this particular fight. There are plenty of people in America as well as this country and across the world who simply do not want to face the reality of this war: a defeat for America is a defeat for the West, and a defeat for America is anything that can reasonably (or even unreasonably) be portrayed as such by the world's mass media, which generally speaking is not well-disposed towards the United States in any event.

There is reason to believe that the "surge" strategy announced by President Bush is having a beneficial effect. The upswing in terrorist activity of late is the result not of sectarian conflict in Iraq, but rather of Al-Qaeda activity, as Frederick Kagan explains:

The spate of car-bombs and suicide bombs, which the New York Times describes as "sectarian violence" and which many point to as evidence of the current strategy's failure, are very different from the sectarian strife we saw raging at the start of this year. Suicide bombs and car bombs are the copyright of al Qaeda and associated militant Islamist groups--Shiite militias prefer more precisely targeted killings when they kill and do not use such methods. Al Qaeda, a Sunni group, has conducted many of the recent attacks against fellow Sunnis in Anbar and elsewhere who have started to fight the terrorists. These attacks are not sectarian violence, but al Qaeda's attempts to regain its footing in its former strongholds or to establish bases in new areas. The current wave of violence is a surge by the one force fighting in Iraq that has declared its intention to destroy the United States. It is a surge in terrorist killing by the organization that almost every leading congressman believes America should be fighting. It is not evidence that sectarian violence is uncontrollable or that the Maliki government won't make concessions. It is evidence that our implacable foe is not ready to lose yet. Timelines for withdrawal can only encourage this enemy, which has always believed that killing enough people will drive the Americans away.

This last sentence holds the key point. Throughout the conflict, Al-Qaeda and its allies have known that the West's weak point is likely to be a lack of resolve: that our people will become weary, irresolute or just bored by the conflict and demand a way out. All that is needed for terrorism to win in Iraq is for the terrorists to hold their nerve longer than we can hold ours. If they can manage that, then Islamism will have won its first military victory over the West. It really is that simple: cowardly and opportunistic votes in the United States Senate, if not vetoed by the President, hand the victory to the enemy in this battle, and guarantee that the West will have many more battles to fight in the future.