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The Certainty Of Victory Is Greatest In Defeat

They are willing to wager everything in Baghdad and its surroundings. Either they will reap glory, triumph, and sure victory in Iraq, having humiliated the proud United States and shown what a phony it is — or they themselves will be deflated, humiliated, and put on the ashbin of this century. Here is where the […]

They are willing to wager everything in Baghdad and its surroundings. Either they will reap glory, triumph, and sure victory in Iraq, having humiliated the proud United States and shown what a phony it is — or they themselves will be deflated, humiliated, and put on the ashbin of this century. Here is where the line has been drawn. ~Michael Novak

But they haven’t wagered “everything.”  They are wagering relatively little.  Al Qaeda in Iraq is one branch of the tree, one front among many.  The very language of “central front” betrays outdated, conventional thinking about this war, as if this were a war with static lines created by two armies in the field and as if conventional tactics (i.e., defeating the enemy “in the field”) could secure victory.  If Al Qaeda in Iraq were defeated, does anyone believe that this would signal to them or to others in the Islamic world that they had been relegated to the “ashbin of history”?  They would view it as a temporary setback, just as they have been able to adjust and reorganise to the fall of the Taliban.  If restoring the Caliphate is the supposed prize, the final goal, the jihadis will presumably take the long view and view any defeat as one small hiccup in their eventual, supposedly divinely-ordained victory.  Jihadis are used to be relegated to the “ashbin of history” (they have not enjoyed what you would call a winning streak of late) but they have the most stubborn insistence that they do not belong there and they keep crawling back out, shaking off the ash and making another play for power.  If our civilisation has any mettle in it, we would do the same.  One is reminded of the lines from Gladiator:

Quintus: A people should know when they’re conquered.

Maximus: Would you, Quintus?  Would I? 

In this confidence of eventual victory the jihadis are thinking ideologically, but democratist fundamentalists in the West think in much the same way about their virtually inevitable, almost historically-guaranteed triumph.  If America is seen as having been driven out of Iraq, if this is counted to us not as a strategic retreat but a genuine, humiliating defeat (which only becomes more likely the longer we stay), does anyone think that we are going to curl up and die?  Does anyone think it will humble for a moment the buffoons who led us into this war?  No, the very same ideologues who sold the country on this disastrous war will be back, almost immediately, to tell us where the next “crucial” battleground is and why we really must stop them this time; they will probably continue to urge us to pursue the same goals: disarmament of certain regimes and democratisation.  Neither set of ideologoues would learn anything, because for them defeat only teaches them to redouble their effort and their dedication to the Cause.  For those of us in the “reality-based community,” defeat is a signal that something fundamental is awry and needs serious fixing.  Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for the rest of us, whoever “wins” in Iraq neither side will be consigned to the “ashbin of history,” because both sides’ ideologues are positively certain that history is on their side.

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