Let's be the strong horse

Tony Blankley is exactly right about what is at stake for America if we pull out now from Iraq.

None of these senators has even addressed the question of whether the U.S. is safer if we leave Iraq than if we stay. Isn't that the key question? The question is not whether the Iraqi government deserves American sacrifice on their behalf. Our sons and daughters are not fighting, being grievously wounded and dying for Iraq — but for American vital interests. If this were just about Iraqi democracy, I might join the screaming for a quick exit.

But if al Qaeda can plausibly claim they drove America out of Iraq (just as they drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan) they will gain literally millions of new adherents in their struggle to destroy America and the West. We will then pay in blood, treasure and future wars vastly more than we are paying today to manage and eventually win our struggle in Iraq.

Our staying power, unflinching persistence in the face of adversity, muscular capacity to impose order on chaos and eventual slaughtering of terrorists who are trying to drive us out will do more to win the "hearts and minds" of potentially radical Islamists around the world than all the little sermons about our belief in Islam as the religion of peace. As Osama bin Laden once famously observed, people follow the strong horse.

We have two choices: Use our vast resources to prove we are the strong horse; or get ready to be taken to the glue factory.

We can argue all day about whether or not it was the right decision to go to war in Iraq in the first place. But that is just not relevant now. We have to make decisions based on where we are now rather than where you might wish we had or hadn't done. It's not as if pulling out now magically turns the page back to 2002 and we can proceed as if we had never been there.