WIN

Victor Davis Hanson(VDH) has a good piece out today which takes an overarching look at our fight on Islamic terrorism in the Middle East and points out that even though the sacrifices that we have made or are going to make with regards to Iraq far outweighs the fate that awaits us if we lose this war. Here's a look at what VDH has to say about the crossroads we face with regards to Iraq:

One, we can withdraw ground troops and return to punitive and conventional bombing — tit-for-tat retaliation for each attack in the future. That way, the United States stays distant and smacks the jihadists on their home bases below. Few Americans die; terrorists sometimes do. The bored media stay more concentrated on the terrorists' provocations, not on our standoff response from 30,000 feet in the clouds.

Or American forces, at great danger, can continue to change the political and economic structure of the Middle East in hopes of fostering constitutional governments that might curb terrorism for generations. This current engagement demands our soldiers fight jihadists on their vicious turf, but by our humanitarian rules. For this, we must pay the ensuing human and materiel price — all broadcast live on the evening news.

The first choice, a return to what was practiced throughout the 1980s and 1990s, is easy and offers short-term relief with little controversy. But the second path, which we have taken to prevent another 9/11, is hard, lengthy and thus unpopular. Yet it holds out the promise of long-term solutions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Presidents Reagan, Bush senior and Clinton, who respectively skedaddled out of Beirut, skipped Baghdad and fled from Mogadishu, didn't risk, lose or solve much against the terrorists.

In contrast, George W. Bush wagered everything by going into Afghanistan and Iraq. And he will either make things much worse or much better for millions — depending on how successfully the United States can endure the messy type of war that jihadists welcome and the American military usually seeks to avoid.

Military success on the ground now demands that we expand the rules of engagement to allow our troops to shoot more of the jihadists, disarm the militias, train even more Iraqis troops to take over security more quickly, and seal the Syrian and Iranian borders.

This solution, of course, is easier said than done. The military must use more force against those who are destroying Iraqi democracy at precisely the time the American public has become exasperated with both the length and human cost of the war.

Imagine this war as a sort of grotesque race. The jihadists and sectarians win if they can kill enough Americans to demoralize us enough that we flee before Iraqis and Afghans stabilize their new found freedom. They lose if they can't. Prosperity, security and liberty are the death knell to radical Islam. It's that elemental.

It would be nice if a lot of the folks in D.C. would take VDH's ideas and adopt a warrior ethos to winning the the battle for Western Civilization rather than offering "hot-air" or bombast that does nothing but catch headlines or helping advance themselves to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2008. With the nostalgia of Ford floating around the ether, I believe we need can reformulate the 38th President's WIN(Whip Inflation Now) slogan into a a 2007 foreign policy centric slogan of Win Iraq Now. It might be corny but it sounds like a winner compared to some of the ideas coming out of the Capitol Hill or from the Iraq Study Group(which had a lot of Ford realist foreign policy acolytes.)