What Victory Means

No, I have not yet arrived at any real estimation of what conditions that assure us victory will look like. However, the very talented Tigerhawk has done an admirable job in laying out his idea of the conditions that must occur before we can safely and truly claim victory in the war against the Islamists (al Quaeda, Taliban wannabes, etc). Among the many salutory points in his remarkable essay, is the following:

Give the average Muslim an idea worth fighting for. Average Abdul need not "like" the United States or give us "credit" in any way, shape or form for this strategy to work. He only needs to want to choose his own government and have an idea how to do that.

This is an astounding point that most, if not all of our so-called Exempt Media have completely missed in their rush to claim defeat and predict the eternal hatred of 'the Arab street'. Perhaps if they were not so focused on their own anti-Bush agenda and theirt desire for their country to lose this war (why that is, I do not know, as they would surely be some of the first to die in the inevitable bloodletting that would accompany such a defeat), they might even be able to grasp some of this.

In any event, this essay is a must-read, together with Tigerhawk's equally cogent updated and annotated version of Steven Den Beste's essay on the strategic overview of the war. Read the whole of both essays and then decide.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.