In comments to the previous post, Duncan Young writes:

The big difference is that in WWII the shape of victory was pretty damn clear – specific land was occupied, papers were publically signed, POW’s turned over etc etc.

I’ve never heard a non-handwaving description of what ‘winning’ looks like in the War on Terror. Which is a bit of a problem with applying the whole ‘war’ paradigm to this case.

That’s one of the problems with calling it a “War on Terror.”

If we call it by its right name, a war on radical Islamic fundamentalism, then the victory conditions become more clear, if not entirely politically correct.

It means a Middle East (and other places) in which governments don’t actively fund (or look the other way at) terrorist activities, in which imams in the mosques don’t preach hate and death to the Jews and other infidels every Friday evening, with either active government support or acquiescence, in which madrassas, if they exist at all, teach a modern and reformed version of Islam. It may also include a prosperous and free Arab world, though unfortunately it need not if those other conditions can occur without it.

That’s what victory looks like. How to achieve it is unclear, and worthy of debate, but many opponents of the war and the administration don’t even seem to see that as a legitimate goal, let alone one to debate the means of getting there. The politically incorrect part is that it means committing “culturicide,” which is something that remains an anathema to the multi-culti cultists, to whom all is relative. And while it doesn’t require genocide, it may indeed require killing many more people than we might desire, because there are some minds that won’t be changed.

Certainly policies followed in the eighties and nineties (to which it sounds like Senator Kerry wants us to return) won’t get us there. Whether or not the current policy will remains to be seen, but it’s got a lot better prospects than prosecutions and diplomacy alone. There will be many more regime changes, by various means, before this war is over.

Go read VDH today:

We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.

Over at Winds of Change my favorite member of the WoC crew has decided to drop the pseudonym and let us know that Armed Liberal is Marc Danziger. He’s the new C.O.O. of Spirit of America, a charity that’s working to make life better for Iraqis and in doing so portray America in a more favorable light. I’ve said before that the current conflict is all about perceptions. Spirit of America is on track to make us all safer by making it harder for the enemy to recruit. I believe that efforts like this will have a greater effect in the long run than any purely military operation (which is not to suggest that military operations are unneccessary in the short term). Check out the site and see if you can help out.

Andrew Sullivan points out that Susan Sontag is vying for one of his Susan Sontag awards:

…the cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is a Susan Sontag essay. Yes, she’s going to write about Abu Ghraib. And – yes! – the headline is: “The Photographs Are Us.”

Fine, Susan. I’ll consider the possibility that “the photographs are us” when you and other people in the intelligentsia and media will admit that people like this are you.

At least for those who, for partisan political purposes, are hoping for bad news in Iraq. It’s a roundup of all of the good things that are happening there, that aren’t being prominently reported.

The conventional wisdom is that we lost the battle of Fallujah, by pulling back and letting a former Ba’athist general take over. In that context, reader Mike Puckett points out this very encouraging news.

With this kind of good news, combined with the bringing to heel of Al-Sadr, it’s easy to see why the quagmirists in the media want to keep the focus on Abu Ghraib.

The conventional wisdom is that we lost the battle of Fallujah, by pulling back and letting a former Ba’athist general take over. In that context, reader Mike Puckett points out this very encouraging news.

With this kind of good news, combined with the bringing to heel of Al-Sadr, it’s easy to see why the quagmirists in the media want to keep the focus on Abu Ghraib.

The conventional wisdom is that we lost the battle of Fallujah, by pulling back and letting a former Ba’athist general take over. In that context, reader Mike Puckett points out this very encouraging news.

With this kind of good news, combined with the bringing to heel of Al-Sadr, it’s easy to see why the quagmirists in the media want to keep the focus on Abu Ghraib.

Mohammed at Iraq The Model has an encouraging story of a trip to the southern part of Iraq:

The point behind all these pictures and stories I mentioned is that the people started to speak out and express their feelings and here we

I’ve had several people find their way to this site today with searches on variants of “Berg Decapitation Beheading Video etc.”

Not a single one came searching for information on Abu Ghraib.

Those stupid people. They won’t let their betters tell them what’s news.

[Update at 4:30 PM PDT]

Here’s a weird one–“Arab locust beheading”

[Update on Friday afternoon]

Brian Linse disagrees.

In a sense he makes my point. There probably are many people looking for this item merely for the dubious pleasure of watching a snuff film, but the fact remains that demand for it is relatively high because the same news outlets that couldn’t wait to show us pornography that reflected badly on the administration remain unwilling to show something that might arouse “the American street.”