Submitted by Nolan Nelson, Jul 20, 2007 16:50

Hillary Clinton's request for withdrawal plans highlights our well-deserved reputation for abandoning allies, ignoring other's tragedies, and failing to respond to significant attacks. During the Cold War examples would be crises in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Cuba, and Lebanon. More recently notoriety surrounds apathy towards Somalia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Sudan. Muslims of the Salafi/Wahhabi heresy take encouragement from failure to defend Iranian embassy sovereignty, and lethargic responses to 15 subsequent, major terrorist attacks under four presidents. They understand the self-congratulatory righteousness we embrace when finding comforting failure within elegant foreign policy models for necessity, proportional response, multi-lateralism, re-deployment and exit strategy.

Before the Senate unanimously confirmed Lt. General Petraeus, this Princeton PhD provided a splendid dissertation for using classic counterinsurgency tactics; tactics consistently victorious when not politically subverted by letters such as Senator Clinton's. We cannot remind Iraqi allies and enemies of repeated achievements adopting comforting failure, when moderate constituencies seeking consensus on tough political issues must maintain their courage against those who would commence negotiation with butchery. All statements must emphasize disengagement proceeds as Iraqi and U.S. governments agree favorable conditions exist. Only then can the Salafi/Wahhabi jihadists understand we intend to persevere in this generational conflict against them.

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