It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt

            I open this monologue with the above text. It is a reflective text that causes one to wonder about the times before us. About the men before us, who led us, steered us toward the nation we are today. Men don’t talk like this anymore. Our language, having endured countless assaults by multiculturalists, is more of a rabid slang. Doomsayers often say it is history that does repeat itself. But what if history repeating is the natural and good way of the universe?

            In bringing up Roosevelt’s quote I mean to look at the end and means of Bush’s cause through a specific lens. It is true as Mr. Babbin states that victory has never clearly been defined, and why is this? The Left would have us believe President Bush incompetent. However, for as many different “definitions of victory” that have appeared on our TV screens, we all miss an important viewpoint. The war against Saddam and the war for democracy are mutually exclusive.

            It is my honest belief the Bush Administration acted on their sincere understanding that Saddam was a threat. Was this a form of Group Think? Perhaps, though it is irrelevant. The importance is in looking at the transition from Gulf War 2a to Gulf War 2b. Upon crushing Saddam’s regime, and not finding the significant WMD’s believed to be there, (mind you I’m not saying they weren’t there) how did we transition from neo-rational self interest to nation building? Vision.

            I believe George W. Bush is a visionary. He has dared to dream. Yet this dream is unimaginably expensive. Mr. Babbin is correct in his tally of thousands of soldiers, the way of the forlorn British Empire. Regardless of which way the future holds, we are imperialists of a sort. I dare say this in an attempt to shatter the traditional stigma of negative connotation. America has been the Empire of Freedom, the Empire of those men who dared to dream. Yet not all dreams succeed, or succeed as planned. But in between a total war and stalemate is No Mans Land. This is where we are currently. Like in Roosevelt’s quote, we are on the path of failing while daring greatly, but in a twist we are also, not knowing victory or defeat.

            So what of Civil War? Not long ago a nation whose rebellious intent was not secession, but to at first declare their patriotism to Mother England backfired. The rest is history. Revolution at its basest definition involves blood.  The current Iraqi “government” is much like a continental congress, it was formed and has made decisions on its own, but the key to sovereignty is by means of force alone. In our Civil War with England it was not the French who defeated the redcoats; it was by our own will the deed was done.

But Mr. Babbin raises the question, “Is it folly to think democracy will work in the Arab world?” Perhaps, but we don’t know, not yet at least. Our key arguments against leaving Iraq are being our own impediment toward victory. We declare that once we leave, the vultures of terror will sweep in on Iraq like carrion. Herein lay the true folly, we are declaring Schroedinger’s cat dead before opening the box. We forget that as civilized as we are, humans are still animals. Because of our “civilized” nature we have instinct but we also have social instinct. Birds push their young out of the nest, for the chicks to fly. They fly or they die, and Iraq as a society and Iraqi’s as humans must do one or the other.

            Where then is the victory for us? Generation-Y’s “Now! Now! Now!” permeates our knowledge and our mindset of victory like rancid meat. Did we fail in Vietnam? Or did we slow the spread of the disease by slowly freezing it long enough to treat it? We did defeat Communism after all. True Victory in Iraq comes through our faith in freedom, that through the ashes of strife, the Iraqi’s will have earned Democracy. As we believe in freedom, we must believe in the success of freedom. And if we are to falter in this regard, we should give great cause to re-examine faith as a whole.

            But that is the definition of victory for nation building, and only nation building; a nation builds itself. What of our war on terror? To leave Iraq, to fight terror and not nation build, is the path to victory. The “fight them there so as to not fight them here” principle is sound. But instead of fighting in place B so as to not have to fight in place A, we are fighting in place C. The terror sponsoring regimes of Syria and Iran must be the locales of place B. As with any international game there is however a tipping point. If we do not go to the true place B, then we will have to fight them here in place A, with nuclear weapons entered into the equation.

Fighting (and winning) in place B also helps in a secondary fashion as well. It should be understood; that the only reason doubt and disdain for democracy in Arab states exists is because oppressive terror states threaten to destroy them. Our nation’s own natural geography protected it from backlash from non democratic nations. This is not a luxury the Arab world has. Valuable resources lay next to one another separated by man-made borders. These boundaries were set unnaturally by those outside the respective countries own sovereignty. It is only by removal of threats to democracy as a whole, can it flourish. We feared a domino effect of Communism and put up blockades, let us have faith in a domino effect of Freedom, and remove blockades.

In this American lives will be spent on nation building, but not by nation building. Our means needs adjusting, while our end is just.

-Matthew Brian Keller