Doubts of competence

From the Washington Post: U.S. Marines have postponed plans to mount an attack against insurgents holed up here and instead will attempt to regain control of this violence-wracked city without a full-scale offensive, military commanders said Sunday. Concerned about the repercussions an attack could generate across Iraq and the Arab world, senior U.S. military and civilian officials said they had decided to try to confront a band of hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have effectively taken over Fallujah, by having Marines conduct patrols in the city alongside Iraqi security forces. The new strategy, reached in consultation with the White House over the weekend, represents an effort by U.S. officials to avoid a military incursion that could entail urban combat, civilian casualties and a wave of retributive strikes outside Fallujah, further poisoning relations between Iraqis and U.S. occupation forces.

I’d like the “we are at war” crowd to stop its blind cheerleading for a moment and imagine battalion-level tactical decisions being made by the Roosevelt administration during WWII. Did anyone stop for five seconds to worry about whether sending the 4th Infantry into Cherbourg was going to generate repercussions across Nazi Germany and the Axis world? Every week that goes by strengthens my suspicion that 1) the enemy may be at war with us, but we are not at war with it, and, 2) the present administration is going to be judged a miserable failure with regards to the prosecution and long-term effects of its undeclared war.

Clearly neither the nation nor its leadership is prepared to fight an open war against those who have repeatedly declared war on America. Therefore, it is better that we do not do so, but instead bring the troops home from around the world, secure our borders, expel the many fifth-columnists who are here illegally or temporarily and wait until the global jihad either collapses of its own self-contradictions or grows until it can no longer be ignored. Imitating the Israeli Two-Step and attempting to win hearts and minds in what is a revival of a 1300-year religious conflict is simply stupid and is doomed to failure. The fact that America is now irreligious does not mean it will be able to opt out forever; it’s not as if the Byzantine Empire or medieval Christendom was a collection of quiet Bible-studying evangelical prayer groups either. But the truth is that at this point, the jihad is not yet a direct threat to America’s existence.

I realize that this is not a popular view, either with my fellow libertarians or pro-war conservatives. Still, I have no agenda except to advocate individual freedom in America and I am simply commenting on the facts as best I understand them.