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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 2, 2008 / 24 Teves, 5768

We Sacrificed 4,000 To Vindicate 3,000; Seeking Psychological Victory in the ‘Global War on Terror’

By Tony Blankley


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility — just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand. But we are fighting this war with the journalists we have, not the ones we want.


However, although the media maintained a virtual radio silence once things started going our way, the public has come to recognize the military success. Typical of recent polling is the Pew Research Center poll from Nov. 27, which shows that about half the country thinks the military effort is going very or fairly well (up from 30 percent). The public is also substantially more optimistic than it was in recent years that we are reducing civilian casualties, preventing civil war, defeating insurgents, preventing terrorist bases and rebuilding infrastructure.


Despite such optimism, by 54 percent to 41 percent (virtually unchanged from February's 53 percent to 42 percent), the public wants our troops to come home rather than stay. Recent polls by Harris Poll, Zogby, Washington Post-ABC News and The Associated Press all show ambiguity in public attitudes. Even as the number of people who think we are going to succeed or win approaches 50 percent or more, a majority of people don't want us to stay, and barely one out of three people thinks the war was worth the effort.


In politics, it is usually the case that when your opponents stop talking about an issue, you must be winning with the public on it. Following that almost iron rule of political communication and in light of the fact that the anti-war Democrats have virtually stopped talking about the war, they must think it is no longer a winner for them.


But the polling data cited above would suggest that if the Democrats don't see the war as a winning issue, neither can President Bush, and those of us who support the war effort feel we have the public behind us. In other words, the public now tends to think we are succeeding, but it doesn't think it is worth the effort and would like us to leave pretty soon, anyway.


There would seem to be no higher communications task for the president and his supporters during the coming months than to make a better case that the success that may well be within our grasp is not only worth persisting over now but also that, even knowing what we know now, the war was worth the effort from the beginning.


Assuming we succeed in establishing a stable government in Iraq that is hostile to terrorists and respectful of the United States and the legitimate order of the world — and while we aren't there yet, we now have good grounds to expect such an end — I believe a strong case can be made for the value of not only finishing the war now but also, even based on what we now know, for having decided to fight it in the first place.


First, of course, the debit side must be noted, foremost the human cost, to date: about 4,000 dead American troops, about 30,000 injured, perhaps half seriously — including more than 600 amputees and traumatic brain injuries. Many more Iraqis have been killed. The financial cost of the war will run above $1 trillion. We also, at least temporarily, have driven thousands of Muslims into the radical ranks, created great enmity in much of the Muslim world (and not a little in Europe, also).


Against these costs and terrible human losses, on the credit side, we eliminated a vicious anti-American regime and aborted any future plans they might have had for developing nuclear weapons. We intimidated Libya to give up its surprisingly advanced nuclear program. And if the recent National Intelligence Estimate is to be believed, Iran happened to give up its nuclear program just at the moment that a few hundred thousand American troops occupied Baghdad — conveniently close to Iran.


These geopolitical facts are precisely evidence of the larger strategic purpose of the war. As I argued in August 2002, in a column in which I predicted that this war would unleash vast hostility against us, I endorsed Henry Kissinger's argument for the war that we had to demonstrate that a terrorist challenge to us produces catastrophic consequences for not only its perpetrators but also its tacit supporters. "We had to break the will and pride of all those in the Islamic world who would dare terrorize us and the international system."


Bin Laden said it best. His people will follow the strong horse. If, after years of stumbling and bumbling, the enduring strength and eventual wisdom of the American people can enter into the belly of the Islamist world, overturn tyrants, empower the Muslim people with peaceable and prosperous ways and intimidate two Islamist nuclear aspirants to renounce their pretensions, we will show ourselves to be the strong horse. Thereby we will hasten the day when the terrorist pretensions will fall on deaf Muslim ears and the threat of Islamist terrorism will begin to recede.


We have it almost in our hands to gain the first strategic psychological victory in the "war on terror" — and that will have been worth the suffering and the loss.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. Comment by clicking here.

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