Sunday, November 12: In today’s must-read column, Mark Steyn writes about America’s impending impeasement stance with global enemies, thanks to our new Democratic Congress:
The enemy [terrorists] aren’t a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We’re all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they’d done a Spain — blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building — they’d have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson — that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia — a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election — you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked
…
What does it mean when the world’s hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet’s military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it “redeployment” or “exit strategy” or “peace with honor” but, by the time it’s announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation.
…
As it is, we’re in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can’t muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.It doesn’t work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can’t win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That’s how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. “These Colors Don’t Run” is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. … To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
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Tune in to MSNBC today at 5:30 p.m. EST to hear me and a liberal blogger discussing whether it’s time to start campaigning for 2008. I say yes, it’s time.
Update: Did you watch? Nah, I didn’t think so. Oh, well. I’ll get back to my quiet weekend now…
Later (6:48 p.m.)…Oh, no! Allah captured the segment. I’ve already received an e-mail about my Congressman “Tom Tancredo for president” remark. 
I also said I didn’t think John McCain would run. That’s because I didn’t know he’d set up an exploratory committee. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking…
I was on with Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left. I met her at the CNN blog party. (Nice lady!)
There was so much I thought of saying in the segment that I didn’t say, things I should have expressed differently, etc., but…I’ll try not to be too self-critical.
I’ve opened comments in case you want to, you know, comment.
Who’s your choice for president in 2008?
