Between Fallujah And February...

The fighting in Iraq - right now - is incredibly intense.

Many reportorial accounts capture the bravery of our soldiers - and what's at stake. None better than these 3 : First, from a tip by HUGH HEWITT - a story from the NYTIMES; second, one from the UK's Independent - about the fighting that's following on from Fallujah - in the Triangle of Death. And here's another from the UK Independnent.

The battles fought between Fallujah and the First of February (after the votes in Iraq's first real election have been counted) are the battles that will determine the strategy and pace of the coming year or two in the GWOT.

YES: that much is at stake. Which is why the Jihadoterrorists are fighting so hard. And why we must utterly defeat them - now. A clear victory in Iraq will make it much less likely that we will have to use force to settle our problems with our other three foes in the GWOT - Syria, Iran, and North Korea. And it will buttress our precariously ambivalent allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, AND even… "Old Europe."

Using new and hard-won strategies - (initiated by the tough reformist Rumsfeld BEFORE 9/11) - we vanquished first the theocratic Taliban and then the socialist Saddam, and sent a crucial signal to all other regimes that would harbor or aid the Jihadoterrorists: We will dethrone you; we will destroy you. These two campaigns were frighteningly swift, and demonstrated our vastly superior weaponry and training - and our new strategies and tactics. We did in weeks what huge armies had failed to do for centuries.

Our victory over the Jihadoterrorists in the current phase - undertaking horrifically dangerous urban warfare - will send a powerful message to every Jihadi instigator and every would be Jihadi recruit in every street of every city in the uncivilized world: "We fear no evil and we are willing to suffer serious and sad casualties to destroy you, too."

And if they get that message, then the hard-won and heroic victory we shall win in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq will make future diplomatic efforts everywhere else much more likely to succeed.

But, if - (after these incredible demonstrations of moral conviction and military might) - our diplomatic efforts should fail (in North Korea, Iran, and Syria), it should make it absolutely clear to everyone - including the Left - that our enemies are not reasonable - in the most basic sense of the word. And: that we have no other choice than to destroy them, too.

So... I hope that Iran and Syria and North Korea are watching very closely. And that they act accordingly.