What’s more, in Afghanistan we are mostly fighting al-Qaeda’s junior partner, the Taliban. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have been reconstituting al-Qaeda HQ across the border in the wilder reaches of Pakistan. No one arguing against the Petraeus mission has provided even the vaguest outline of an improved strategy to confront al-Qaeda forces there.
For nations as well as for individuals, both winning and losing can be habit-forming. How many people have you heard say that America lost in Vietnam – and so what? In 1979, the Iranian mullahs seized our embassy and took our diplomats hostage and we made them pay no price – and so what? In 1983, Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and we did nothing much – and so what? Ten years later, we retreated from Somalia – and so what? The World Trade Towers were bombed for the first time that same year and we held no regimes or movements responsible – and so what?
But you know what. America was seen as a toothless tiger --“a society that cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle,” in the words of Saddam Hussein. He instructed “all militant believers” to “target [American] interests wherever they may be." Bin Laden declared the United States “a weak horse.”
In 2006, al-Zawahiri predicted that the U.S. would go down to defeat in Iraq. It is, he said, “only a matter of time.” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, added: “I advise all those who place their trust in the Americans to learn the lesson of Vietnam ...and to know that when the Americans lose this war --and lose it they will, Allah willing -- they will abandon them to their fate, just like they did to all those who placed their trust in them throughout history."
Let’s suppose it will require a hundred years to defeat such people, the ideas they espouse and the movements they represent. Do we really have anything more important to do?