There are a lot of presidential candidates out there today more than willing to stop pounding al-Qaeda, to stop chasing them down, and simply pretend we have won by holding parades down Main Street USA. It is a sick, pathetic and spineless plan for American defeat. It is more active on the far left, but it lives as well among too many on the right. Its as if all the years of internal bickering and hyper-partisan BS has taken the resolve from us to beat Bin Laden’s thugs so they cannot ever pull off another 9-11. In our weary state of mind we think suicidal martyrs will give up after a few major defeats because it is we who are tired of fighting.

Oh, if it was all that easy. al-Qaeda is not going to go down easy. And even worse – we have forgotten the horrors of 9-11. We promised we wouldn’t, but we obviously did. We swore to all those who died that day we would not forget, we would not give up, we would not leave their attackers free to attack again. We were united – until the greed of political power began to eat away at some. And then at more and more.

First the left fell away with its ridiculous claims of made-up intelligence prior to Iraq (of course the only story proven to actually be made up was that story by Joe Wilson that he debunked Forged Niger documents – something that did not supposedly exist at the time of his efforts). They decided a Presidential election was more important than their promises to the fallen. They began to destroy our resolve over exaggerated and marginal trivia.

But then the GOP splintered and started attacking itself. It too began to wonder more about political power at home. The President was “Bushilter” or “El Presidente Jorge Bush”. It is embarrassing to face, but we let the pressures of the times create fractures which some exploited.

For the last 3 years the battle cry has not been “Victory to America” it has been “Who Is The Most Pure Partisan”! It has been one of history’s more grotesque examples of losing focus because the fight we face became harder than we wanted. We wanted Gulf War I. We knew back then taking out Saddam Hussein implied years of effort to put it back together again. And back then the far right turned on a President Bush because he told them what they did not want to hear – the facts. And the left jumped at the idea of appeasing butchers.

Let me blunt (since I am no good at subtle): al-Qaeda is banking on America to elect the anti-Bush in 2008 – someone who will find any excuse to snatch defeat from our current momentum towards victory. I know they are banking on this because (a) they like what they saw with the Benazir Bhutto killing and (b) they have sworn to step up their attacks on Iraqis. In fact, they are attacking the very people they wish to lead right now and creating a huge Muslim backlash because they are betting America can still wimp out before it is too late. Here is another story (from a line of stories going back months) on the atrocities of al-Qaeda and the response of the brave Iraqis:

A suicide bomber blew himself up on the hood of a car driven by a member of Iraq’s burgeoning Sunni-dominated security forces, the latest in a series of recent attacks against the U.S.-backed militiamen, according to U.S. military and Iraqi officials.

The bomber struck in downtown Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, where Sunni insurgents began turning on one another last year. These tensions have grown as some insurgent groups, particularly the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have allied themselves with U.S. soldiers against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

…

The bomb went off near a passport office, wounding people inside. “When the explosion occurred, I fell down and after a few minutes I raised my head and saw many bodies,” said Asmaa Abdul Kareem, 28, who was taken to the hospital. “What happened is not related to Islam at all — no one accepts this type of action,” she said. “We were civilians and families visiting the passport office.”

Members of the Sunni security force said the blast killed one of their leaders, Abdul Rafia al-Nadawi, known as Abu Sajad, a lecturer in the education department at Diyala University.

Militiaman Ismael Talib, 35, said he saw a bearded man in black clothes jump atop the hood of the vehicle before setting off his bomb. “We expected this act because we decided to confront al-Qaeda,” Talib said. “We have lost more than 25 people from our group, as well as five leaders, in the fight against al-Qaeda.”

Note to John Edwards: what kind of scum runs away from these brave people to let them be slaughtered by the same people who slaughtered our people on 9-11? What kind of spineless coward must you be? And for the record, we have a plan to bring our folks home in victory, and the Iraqis will be the ones replacing our men and women on the front lines to fight against al-Qaeda. So Edwards, stop giving hope to Bin Laden and slamming our forces.

Who would have predicted that after 9-11 Iraqis would be allied with us hunting down al-Qaeda? All we have heard since 9-11 is how impossible it is to win this war against al-Qaeda. Yet here we are winning it. Yet we are still surrounded by people here in America unwilling to let go of their mistaken and wrong predictions.

The fact is we have pushed al-Qaeda out of the areas around Baghdad and we are pushing them up and out the North end of Iraq. The data is there for all to see, if they wish to open their eyes beyond party purity BS:

Almost two-thirds of insurgent attacks in Iraq occur in the north of the war-ravaged country, although overall levels of violence have dropped, a US said on Wednesday.

“The percentage of attacks are much more higher in the north than anywhere else in Iraq,” said General James Boozer, US assistant commander in chief for northern Iraq.

“For example, there’s an average of 50 attacks a day in the north, eight in Baghdad and two or three in Anbar. We can say that 60 percent of the attacks occur in (the north),” he said.

…

Since June, he said, the number of attacks had dropped by around 60 percent across the country and by 40 percent in northern Iraq where about 20,000 US troops are based.
In addition, US forces had stopped insurgents using Diyala — where he said Al-Qaeda militants were concentrated — as a key link to Baghdad, Boozer added.

“Diyala is a crucial line of communication that the enemy wants to keep and that they were using to go to Baghdad. That line is now pretty sealed.”

al-Qaeda is being pushed out of Iraq, and where they have been purged violence drops. You don’t need a PhD in statistics to grasp the correlation between al-Qaeda’s presence and blood running through the streets. They are deadly people, and why some would even think for a moment to give them a chance to rest and regroup is beyond me.

We promised the victims of 9-11 we would honor them by doing whatever it takes to stop another 9-11 from happening. We knew then it meant actual war. We knew then it was a ‘generational’ battle. Yet we have not even made it through one President’s terms in office, let alone a generation, and we are losing our resolve. We find rationalizations aplenty to give up and quit, few to go on and win. We see more ideas that let al-Qaeda go before we can deliver the final blow.

For those interested in winning, in making good on our pledges to see this through, I have some words to share:

I mean our challenge is the Terrorists’ War on Us, that’s the challenge of our generation. It’s the challenge that has been handed to us; we didn’t go looking for it, just like, going back to parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, depending on your age, they weren’t looking for a Depression and they weren’t looking for a Second World War. That’s not something that they wanted but they were able, when it came about, to deal with it and to deal with it in an effective way that has made them legendary.

…

“Since September 11th, actually specifically since September 20th, 2001, our nation has been on offense against terrorism. As a consequence it looks like we’ve stopped about twenty-three terrorist attacks, at least that’s the public information that we can find when we look through all of the reports.

…

But it does signify a group of people who have converted what originally were religious beliefs into a political ideology and an ideology of violence and attack. So we’ve got to be able to face what you’re dealing with in order to deal with it, whether it’s an enemy or a group of enemies, you’ve got to be able to face it squarely in order to deal with it.

…

We’re in the middle of a struggle that puts freedom versus fundamentalism, hope versus fear, democracy versus conflict. We didn’t seek this conflict, we didn’t start this conflict but we must finish it and we will win it. I guarantee you that we will win it.

…

“In fact, you and I know that America is stronger, much stronger, because of our ability to disagree with each other in a peaceful way and in a decent way, which is the hallmark of democracy, and that we stand up to tyrants and dictators and terrorists and bullies. We’ve done it in the past, we’re going to do it again, and no one, absolutely no one, should mistake our democracy for a lack of resolve to defend ourselves and to protect ourselves.

These are the words of someone who feels in his heart a mission, a mission to defeat al-Qaeda and stop any future 9-11s. He is not speaking of policy or in sound bites, he is speaking of a terrible reality that has been forced upon us which too many have decided to try and wish away. He is facing it head on. He is one of the few who is not an anti-Bush, but will continue the war on terror with the same dedication and resolve as President Bush. That is because he walked among the victims of 9-11, as did President Bush. He mourned their passing in numerous funerals. He, like Bush, led us out of the smoke engulfing Manhattan to stand tall and fight back against the snickering Bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

He is of course Rudy Giuliani and these our his words – our words if you believe in this country and believe we can eliminate Bin Laden and his ilk from this Earth.