If we leave Iraq, do we lose for good?

Readers weigh in: Bush loyalists, gun lovers, Bach and Bowie fans, soldiers and a poignant letter from the widow of an American lost in Iraq.

By Camille Paglia

Read more: Camille Paglia, Bush, Opinion, Blackwater

July 11, 2007 | Each third column will be devoted to my replies to reader letters, collected at this mailbox. This month's selection of letters follows.

Dear Camille,

To those of you against the war in Iraq, here is what you do not understand: Iraq is but one battle in the 60-plus-year ideological struggle we call "the war on terror." Do you really want to leave Iraq and wait for the enemy and ideology that dropped the World Trade Center to grow into a much stronger, deadlier and efficient killing force? Did you not understand or believe President Bush in his address to the nation on Sept. 20, 2001, when he said:

"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there ... This war will not be like other wars. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen ... Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime ... But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows ... I ask for your ... patience in what will be a long struggle."

I consider myself an independent conservative who still thinks Bush & Cheney are much better than the last administration, if for no other reason than they are not adulterers and liars, and I believe character counts. Bush in my opinion is very honest, loyal, wise and walks with much integrity. He confounds his critics by doing what he says and saying what he does without wavering.

Bush did not steal the 2000 election! He won every time the votes were counted. History will show that the opposition tried to steal that election but failed. He did not lie about WMD in Iraq! His administration inherited an intelligence organization that made him believe WMD were being stockpiled in Iraq, along with a stated policy of regime change.

Bush is mature, acts responsibly and governs by doing what is right, living by the creed "the buck stops here." The previous administration governed by polls and acted like "the buck never got here." After 9/11, and with current knowledge of the day, had Bush not invaded Iraq, I believe he would have been acting as irresponsibly as the previous president.

I do not believe foreign policy under Bush has created more terrorists. On the contrary, it has revealed them.

I also think that a quick retreat from the Middle East would be the same as circling our wagons while waiting for 9/11-inspired attacks to continue here with greater and greater lethality by an enemy who will use WMD as soon as possible. Just try to imagine 9/11 with nukes.

If we choose defeat by giving up and retreating now, even if we are able to avoid attacks at home, we will be back in the Middle East within 10 years facing a much stronger and emboldened enemy with WMD at a cost to the United States in lives and resources hundreds of times higher than at present levels. Victory in the Middle East will be much less costly in a slow deliberate struggle over a long run and should be treated with the same patience that has kept us in Japan, Germany and Korea for more than 40 years.

James Randall

You make a very powerful statement about the crisis of terrorism facing Western culture. Too many of my fellow Democrats seem to underestimate the dangers and difficulties looming over the next century. Western values of individualism and free expression would be obliterated under the fundamentalist regime sought by militant jihadists.

When you say that we are in a "60-plus-year ideological struggle," I assume you are thinking of the start of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union, allies against Hitler, became bitter rivals for world influence in a nuclear arms race that cast a terrifying shadow on anyone who grew up (as I did) in the 1950s.

The Soviet Union, a mammoth entity, would eventually disintegrate because of its economic inefficiencies as well as its restless constellation of striving regions and ethnicities. I must confess I don't see the logic in your conflating the ponderous bureaucratic labyrinth that was the Soviet Union with the small, agile, anarchic cells of terrorists who bedevil us now -- and who in fact humiliatingly drove the Soviet Union out of mountainous Afghanistan.

Similarly, I don't share your admiration of President Bush's post-9/11 speech about terrorism. His warning to the world -- "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" -- may please the ear with its syntactical symmetries, but it reveals a shockingly simplistic reading of geopolitics and indeed of life itself.

Since when did any nation -- even America, which I love -- become the dictatorial arbiter of morality? On what authority did President Bush, imperfectly advised by incompetent or mendacious underlings, divide the human race into those with us or against us? Who are we to demand or enforce such exclusivity and privilege? Why should our own self-interest take priority over that of all others? This is hubris, the excessive pride that both the Hebrew Bible and Greek tragedy warned against.

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