Hizballah terrorists killed 220 American Marines, 18 sailors,
and 3 soldiers on 23 October 1983 by driving a bomb-laden truck
into their barracks in Beirut. America then retreated from Lebanon,
its tail between its legs. Hizballah and Iran — the nation that
created Hizballah and still arms, funds, and supplies it — won
that round. The two — and Syria, which supports both Hizballah and
Hamas — are now in the warmup stage for the next round.
For those who missed the first
lesson in March, there are two schools of foreign policy in the
Republican Party. There are those neo-Wilsonians, such as President
Bush and Secretary of State Rice, who believe that in order to
defeat Islamic terrorism we must establish democracy in the Middle
East as a competitor to radical Islam. They have embarked on a
strategy that requires success in Iraq before action is taken
anywhere else. It is a self-imposed quagmire.
The second school of thought I have labeled, “Endgame
Conservatism.” Those such as I say that history from Carthage to
Vietnam teaches that if we fail to prosecute a war in a manner
calculated to win it decisively, we will lose it inevitably. We
believe that terrorism cannot threaten us significantly without the
support of nations, and that those nations that are preeminent in
their support for terrorists — Iran and Syria — must be forcibly
disconnected from terrorism. We believe that waiting for Islam to
reform itself is tantamount to accepting defeat and that radical
Islam (an ideology, not a religion) must be defeated just as Soviet
Communism and German Nazism were. We believe that our military’s
job is not to build nations but to defeat those that threaten
America. Once they have done so, their job is finished and whatever
the people of a nation do thereafter is their business, not ours,
unless they choose to threaten America or its allies again. We
assert that requiring democracy in Iraq before defeating the Syrian
and Iranian regime enables the enemy to control the pace and
direction of the war. And we believe that peace isn’t about
“processes.” It’s about winners and losers. Until you have each
belligerent in one category or the other, the war isn’t over.
We, and the Israelis who left Lebanon before us, left without
defeating the terrorist regimes that have every day since then used
Lebanon as a terrorist base. In Syria, Hafez Assad has been
succeeded by his son Bashar and, in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeni has
been succeeded by more ayatollahs and their face man, Ahmadinejad,
for whom the Apocalypse is a career objective. Syria has been on
our list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979. Iran has been
on it since 1984. Neither has suffered any consequence for their
dedication to terrorism. Our weakness has become their
strength.
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW in Israel and Lebanon is the direct result of
our failure for more than 20 years, and the Israelis’ failure, to
prosecute this war decisively. What happens next depends on what we
do now. The Bush neo-Wilsonians lack the resolve essential for
decisive action. On Fox News Sunday Secretary Rice did two
things. First, she auditioned for the job of a BBC news presenter
by using consistently the term “extremist” when she should have
said “terrorist.” Second, she took the preposterous position that
going to the UN Security Council was a demonstration of American
determination and strength. She said — again and again — that the
UN payoff was that the Iranians were totally “isolated.” Yes, Mizz
Rice, if by “isolated” you mean Iran is in de facto control of the
world oil market and command of growing global terrorism. If
“isolated” means having huge, open trade with China and Russia and
military weapons and training provided by both. And what are we
doing to act decisively against either Syria or Iran? We are,
again, abdicating our responsibility and asking the UN to decide
for us.
If this White House truly believes feckless UN debating is
decisive action, we have been the worst victims of campaign fraud
since 1976 when Jimmy Carter bamboozled some of us into believing
he was a conservative. We could have gotten this result by staying
home in 2004.
The Democrats, (or rather their brain trust, the NYT
editorial staff), long ago accepted that America is incapable of
winning wars, and believe it should not be permitted to. In a
Saturday editorial that could have been written
by Rice, the Times accepted that Hamas and Hizballah would
not be defeated or their supporters significantly affected by the
outcome of this round of warfare. It opined that the proper
direction of Israeli force is to weaken and isolate Hamas and
Hizballah. Nyet, comrades. The proper direction of Israeli force is
to attack and destroy the enemy’s centers of gravity. Those are
found in Damascus and Tehran, not in Gaza or Lebanon.
ON SUNDAY, Israeli deputy prime minister Shimon Peres said, “There
are officers belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard among
Hizballah and they operated the missile [that struck the Israeli
ship off Lebanon].” We know, from the statements he issues from his
Damascus headquarters, that Hamas leader Khalid Messhaal operates
from Syria with Syrian support. Since we toppled Saddam, Assad’s
regime has supplied, funded, and reinforced the Sunni insurgents in
Iraq. Iran’s mullahcracy has been both funding and arming the Shia
militias and terrorists there. The single most lethal weapon used
against our troops in Iraq — the “explosively-formed projectile”
version of the IED — is made in Iran and smuggled into Iraq. Iran
has waged a one-sided war against us since 1979.
What is happening now in Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza is not the
decisive battle. Fearing a regional war, Israel won’t press its
advantage and remove the Assad regime. It lacks the ability to
remove Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs. This round of fighting will
go on for weeks or months, and then — unless Iran and Syria choose
to raise the stakes — it will end, again. Temporarily, again.
Until they decide to attack, again. What Israel’s enemies — our
enemies — have learned is that we will allow them to choose the
time and place of the decisive engagement. That must change.
Endgame conservatives understand that our enemy is moving slowly
toward its own endgame. The radical Islamists are committed to win,
and nothing will do more than slow their progress until they are
defeated decisively, or until they win.
We have to face one simple fact: democracy depends on a
separation of church and state that is impossible where Islamic law
prevails. Democracy provides us with the freedoms we wish for
everyone. But we cannot allow those who wish to destroy it to
succeed because of our naive desire to impose it in their lands. It
is still our choice to win decisively or lose inevitably. But soon
that choice will no longer be ours to make.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004) and, with Edward
Timperlake, Showdown: Why China Wants War With the United
States (Regnery, May 2006 — click here to obtain a free chapter).
