Some people just don't get it. If we don't move as one nation, we're going to get rolled.

When the Army of Ansar al Sunna - a group tied to al Qaeda - attacks an American base near Mosul it should be apparent that Iraq is the front line in the War on Terrorism.

When Christian churches are bombed - as they were on the same day and in the same part of Iraq - and Shia mosques in Karbala and Najaf are targeted as well, it should be clear that the bombers are waging a most unholy war.

When Iraqi election workers are shot dead in the streets, as they were last weekend, the murderers' hatred for democracy ought to be obvious.

Yet somehow the debate goes on about whether those fighting us are really enemies of freedom, about whether or not it is imperative they be defeated.

We need to recapture the National Spirit we had when fighting Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. In those days, we even had Hollywood behind the effort. Who can forget people like Mickey Rooney or Glen Miller putting on uniforms themselves, and in a later decade even Elvis? Where did Rosie the Riveter go?

When did we lose that kind of National Pride? Was it the Sixties?

History will view this war not as a war of tanks and guns, missiles or stealth planes, but a war of wills. We are not geared to fight this klind of war, not with our Main Stream Media and people like Michael Moore taking salvos at our rear flanks while the Terrorists strike from the front.

Then, too, there are those who do not defend the killers but argue that the continuing carnage proves the United States can't overcome this foe. If that's true, we might as well convert the Pentagon into condominiums.

What need is there for a multi-billion dollar defense establishment designed to roll back an attack by the Soviet Union? What's the point of a military machine that can topple Saddam Hussein in a few weeks but has to give Iraq back to his cronies a few years later?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, much criticized of late, appears to understand this. A few days ago, he frankly acknowledged the urgent need to "develop a military designed to meet the challenges of this era."

The military we have now, he explained, "is, in many ways, still organized, trained and best equipped for the more conventional challenges of the past century, when wars were conducted largely between large navies, armies and air forces."

Our current enemies, by contrast, are fighting an "unconventional" war. The combatants who attacked the Forward Operating Base Marez outside Mosul were not attempting to win a battle in the conventional sense; they did not hope to seize the camp any more than the suicide-terrorists who attacked on 9/11 planned to station tanks in New York and Washington.

Instead, the goal of terrorists is simply to slaughter and, of course, terrorize. By so doing, they mean to destroy our will to fight. Lose the will to fight and, by definition, you have been defeated - no matter how high-tech your weaponry, no matter how many troops you have riding in armored Humvees.

Read the entire article over at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Posted by Michael at December 28, 2004 05:13 PM