Mark Steyn on Zarqawi

Hugh Hewitt read some of Mark Steyn's latest column on his radio show today, but he didn't read the whole thing (or if he did, I didn't hear it all). And what was most compelling for me was at the end.

Mark Steyn is my favorite columnist, and I've been reading his work since shortly after 9/11. Today, his column for the London Telegraph looked at the word on the "Arab Street" about Lebanon-born, Iraq-based al-Qaeda terrorism leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It's not a good word.

On Friday, 200,000 Jordanians took to the streets to denounce al-Zarqawi as a coward and the enemy of Allah. So Mark Steyn asks:

Did they show that on the BBC? Or are demonstrations only news when they're anti-Bush and anti-Blair? And look at it this way: if the "occupation" is so unpopular in Iraq, where are the mass demonstrations against that? I'm not talking 200,000, or even 100 or 50,000. But, if there were just 1,500 folks shouting "Great Satan, go home!" in Baghdad or Mosul, it would be large enough for the media to do that little trick where they film the demo close up so it looks like the place is packed. Yet no such demonstrations take place.

We have a war going on, one that Zarqawi is pushing outside of Iraq--perhaps because the war inside Iraq is getting tougher for him. And yet the Democrats keep talking "exit strategy."

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

Mark Steyn gets it. The media-darling Democrats don't. There's a war on, and the stakes couldn't be higher. We must keep fighting until we win. No. We must keep fighting until we absolutely destroy those who have declared themselves our enemy.