Didn't Al Franken call this guy a conservative he respects? Why?

Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists' spirit or they will crush ours.

When will the right, or the hawks, or whatever they are, get a frigging clue and realize that Iraq is a distraction from the "War on Terror[ism]"? [I get tired of the assaults they regularly make on words. War on Terror - what does that mean? War on Terrorism, dubious as the concept may be, at least makes sense.] This is not the "battle of Midway" - this is as if, having been attacked by the Japanese, we marched off and conquored Mexico. Something equally absurd. Leaving aside all the other reasons to be disgusted by this war, there is the overriding fact - and it is a fact, whatever the government tries to tell you - that everything we do in Iraq weakens our attempts to destroy the terrorists who attacked us. No amount of moral posturing will save us from that fact.

If I were more interested in scoring debating points, I might note that Brooks is, very nearly, saying here that to beat these terrorists we are going to have to be terrorists.

It's not that we can't accept casualties. History shows that Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them. What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence.

Comforting, no? This is couched a bit more carefully than the lazy bitter Americans who say we should just nuke the place - but that's the principal. How do you argue with people like that? I suppose you pull out (as slacktivist, whose post on the subject is my starting point, does) the Washington Post story about the Israeli general criticizing his country's campagn against the Palestinians:

The military chief directed most of his complaints at restrictions imposed on the West Bank four weeks ago, after a suicide bomber from the West Bank city of Jenin killed 21 people in a restaurant in the Israeli port of Haifa. Yaalon said the current curfews and travel restrictions, some of the tightest since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, were preventing Palestinians from carrying out critical olive and other agricultural harvests, hampering thousands of children from attending school, increasing hatred for Israel and strengthening terrorist organizations.

Defenders of American brutalism abroad usually pull out Israel as their example - "look at what Israel does when people blow them up!" Well - look at what Palestinians do when Israel blows them up. Seen from outside, Israel's policies don't look very effective - apparently, seen from inside, they don't look all that effective either.

But why abandon the purely moral argument? You are responsible for what you do, not what someone else does - if you are evil, you are evil, whether they are or not. To exterminate the Iraqis - as those "drop a nuke on Baghdad" types like to dream about - is pure evil, and no talk of self-preservation is worth a pinch of dung. Especialy since it is so utterly and completely uncalled for. This is not nucular combat toe to toe with the Russkies, as Slim Pickens might have it - this is a dull, endless guerrilla war with nasty, desperate outlaws, who can really only hope for two things: to cause us to lose our will and leave, thus throwing the country open to them, or (and?) goad us into atrocities, that will make the Iraqis forget about Saddam Hussein (Brooks, of course, opens with the ritual evocation of the horrors of Hussein's reign) and consider us the enemy.

That is, after all, the purpose of much terrorism - 9/11 most especially - to commit an atrocity that goads your enemy into committing a worse atrocity - to convince people otherwise uninterested in a war to take your side, because the other fellow is worse. That's pretty obviously what the Palestinian radicals are up to - creating tensions the moderates can't handle, getting the Israelis to act indiscriminately, to extend their campaign to include all Palestinians. That is what Al Qaeda was up to. That is what the Iraqi resistance wants. And will get if we retaliate in kind.

So pragmatists and idealists all - how can you deny the best course of action? At least - how can you deny that at all costs you must avod one course of action - to fight the war on the level of your foes. This "war on terrorism" is not a military war in the least - it is a political war. One we lost when we invaded, but that is no reason to lose it again.