Hussein’s Resistance

Iraq's Saddam hopes he can delay our invasion until our will fades, hoping our allies will melt away in the face of ambiguities over right and wrong; or hopes that a bloody defense of Iraqi soil will prompt massive resistance to us in the world. Or deter us in the first place. He has wrapped himself in Islamist ideology to appeal to the widespread tendency to blame for us for the failures of the Moslem world even though it is their own damn fault.

All the more reason to break Saddam—and soon.

If we give Saddam time by delaying an invasion too long, he may very well break the Europeans, or maybe North Korea will invade the South, or something. That is the problem with giving our enemy time to prepare, time to act against us. Their plan might actually work before we can launch ours.

We need to ruthlessly prosecute this war to crush Saddam. Leave no doubt that the self-proclaimed champion of Islam was ripped to shreds. Who cares that right now he gets points for resisting the world’s only superpower? The important thing is that Saddam should lose—badly and clearly. The article says he is appealing to the street as bin Laden did. But the massive uprising on the street failed in the face of his dramatic defeat in Afghanistan and the fall of his protectors, the Taliban. As he said, the street likes to go with the strong horse. So now the street’s irrational hope for blaming America for their failures and having another strong man to stand up to us rests on Saddam’s shoulders.

A despicable champion to be sure that says much about the bankruptcy of their societies. But since they have chosen Saddam, Saddam must die. And with him their hopes for killing us.

Once they lose hope of killing us and winning, maybe we can have a real discussion of what they can do to build a decent society with hope for the future. Once they stop believing that killing us is their road to success, we can talk.

But first things first. No mercy in waging the war. Win it decisively and quickly.

On to Baghdad.