Some in the West, including domestic political opposition, think that the loss of patience by the West translates primarily into retreat, withdrawal, and a return to reliance on diplomacy. That may be a serious misreading of the public attitude. We believe that, for a substantial part of the American public, loss of patience puts them in a far more lethal frame of mind. The overwhelming support in Israel of Ehud Olmert’s swift and total effort to obliterate Hezbollah might also reveal something about the mindset of Americans. VDH:

[T]he world is accepting that the Middle East problem was never about so-called occupied land — but only about the existence of Israel itself….

[F]or all their threats, what the Islamists — from Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to the Iranian government in Tehran to the jihadists in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle — don’t understand is that they are slowly pushing tired Westerners into a corner. If diplomacy, or aid, or support for democracy, or multiculturalism, or withdrawal from contested lands, does not satisfy radical Islamists, what would? Perhaps nothing.

What then would be the new Western approach to terrorism? Hard and quick retaliation — but without our past concern for nation-building, or offering a democratic alternative to theocracy and autocracy, or even worrying about whether other Muslims are unfairly lumped in with Islamists who operate freely in their midst.

Any new policy of retaliation — in light both of Sept. 11 and the messy efforts to birth democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the West Bank — would be something of an exasperated return to the old cruise-missile payback. Yet in the new world of Iranian nukes and Hezbollah missiles, the West would hit back with something far greater than a cruise missile.

If they are not careful, a Syria or Iran really will earn a conventional war — not more futile diplomacy or limited responses to terrorism. And history shows that massive attacks from the air are something that the West does well.

Americans surely do not like what appear to be quagmires. The President’s policy may well be the wisest course in places like Iraq, but a substantial number of Americans might prefer their wars short and their enemies dead, rather than the wisest long-term policy. We have previously written about polls on this topic.

We believe that anti-war cadres in America have deluded themselves into a seriously wrong analysis of the mindset of much of the American people, which is just fine with us — the problem comes because these anti-war types mug for the cameras and announce their views to the enemy via the MSM, encouraging America’s foes to try even greater depredations to wear out the stamina of the man in the street. The anti-war cadres and the MSM hence give temporary aid and comfort to the enemy, goading him to miscalculate and persist in his barbarity. If the result of such aid and comfort is the American version of Israel’s — 100x more powerful than Israel’s strikes against Hezbollah — those anti-war fools may turn out to be responsible for far more killing and suffering — when hell is finally unleashed — than would have taken place if America had presented a unified face to the world in the first place.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 3:31 am and is filed under Democrats, General, Iran, Left of Left, MSM, Polling, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.