Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Unconditional Victory

Tokyo rocks under the weight of our bombs...I want the entire world to know that this direction must and will remain - unchanged and unhampered, Our demand has been and it remains - unconditional surrender." -- Harry Truman 1945

Now they've gone and done it, the Islamists, I mean. Brought America to the point that Franklin Roosevelt reached in 1943 and Harry Truman in 1945. President George W. Bush, in a speech before the American Legion today has laid down the end point of the War on Terror: the destruction or total surrender of the Islamist enemy.

.. on September the 11th, 2001 ...  America declared: we'll start the war from here. ... Nearly two-thirds of known senior al-Qaida leaders, operational managers, and key facilitators, have either been captured or killed. ... Now al-Qaida is wounded, yet, not destroyed. It remains a grave danger to the American people. ... Retreat in the face of terror would only invite further and bolder attacks. There will be no retreat ... 

And so it is today. Our course is set. Our purpose is firm. No act of terrorists will weaken our resolve or alter their fate. Our only goal, our only option, is total victory in the war on terror. And this nation will press on to victory.

Unconditional surrender. The same thing on offer to Hitler and Tojo. The Jihad to annihilate the Dar Al-Harb, the non-Muslim world, has ironically created its own fearful symmetry; and the suicide bomber's victim realizes that he might just was well fight as die. America will not retreat because it has no expectation of mercy from Islam. Radical Islam will fight on because otherwise it would cease to be what it is

But if the end goals are now crystal clear, the details remain fuzzy. What of Saudi Arabia and Iran? What of the hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over? Yet in a sense, they remain details. The essence is clear. We will do all it takes to survive; all we must to prevail.