There is now a war going on in Iraq. This, contrary to what those liberals still whining over the President’s May 1st “Mission Accomplished� speech would say, is not simply a continuation of the war which began last March, the war to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein. Rather, this is a new and entirely different kind of war, fought against a different, more radical, more brutal, and more determined foe. This war is no longer primarily against the Ba’athist. Our primary enemy in Iraq today is the Islamist.

Iraq, the word would seem to be in Muslim circles, has become the new Afghanistan. What we face is an international Jihad, with fighters coming to Iraq from every corner of the Earth to fight the Great Satan. This is something which carries with it both great peril and a great opportunity.

Yes, it is true that the arrival of Islamist forces will place US troops in Iraq in even greater danger than they are today, and that their actions will impose additional hardships upon the people of Iraq. However, a direct and prolonged confrontation between the Coalition and the Jihadists in Iraq will produce something else as well: a chance to fight and slaughter the Islamists on their own home turf, thereby greatly reducing the population of ‘Martyrs’ available for action elsewhere and demoralizing Islamists worldwide. The Afghans charged into Soviet guns for a decade: but they could not have done it without tens of billions of dollars in American aid. The Jihadists have no superpower patron and, if we behave intelligently, they will soon have no patrons at all.

No Sanctuary: The greatest mistake of the United States and Russia in the three most recent major losing guerrilla wars involving a great power (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Chechnya) has been to allow the enemy force to establish a secure sanctuary, protected by international borders and a lack of political will to act. In Vietnam the North Vietnamese were able to operate out of their own country without any fear of a ground invasion as well as to largely have free reign over Laos and Cambodia. In Afghanistan the US used Pakistan as a conduit for supplies, as well as a save haven for meetings and planning. In Chechnya the Chechens have been able to use neighbouring Georgia as a secure area. In all cases the powers contemplated (and in the case of Vietnam took) action against these sanctuaries: but none destroyed them. No modern guerrilla force can long operate without outside support and secure areas from which to plan operations.

Therefore, the United States must take immediate and extreme action to deny all sanctuaries to the enemy forces in Iraq. Specifically this means taking action of some type against, at a minimum, both Iran and Syria, who are clearly aiding the insurrectionists in various ways. We must annihilate the terrorists, wherever they go, and if Syria and Iran stand in our way then we should annihilate them as well.

However, given the global character of this war, there is another excellent way of drawing some of the pressure off of our forces in Iraq. There are reports that an increasing number of the Islamists are Chechen in origin- veterans of the wars against Russia. The situation in Chechnya has degenerated into a stalemate, freeing up some fighters to make their way elsewhere. This simply will not do: either we want those enemies tied down in Chechnya, or we want them dead (and preferably the later).

The United States should immediately reverse its Chechnya policy, instead of urging restraint it should urge Russia to strike out against the terrorist murderers with a maximum level of force, even going so far as to bribe them to get them to do it if we must. We should also drop all objections to a Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia must do what it must to deal with the Islamist vermin that threaten it.

No Quarter: Modern US Army doctrines tend towards casualty-free warfare on both sides. This is an admirable trait when dealing with an honourable foe, but it is a poor one when dealing with Islamists. They will take any act of mercy as an act of weakness and, therefore, encouragement for them to commit future atrocities. Therefore, there should be no mercy for them and, in most cases, no quarter either. They should be killed where they stand and left to rot in the sands. When we find them, or suspect that we have found them, we should kill them and anyone with them unless they immediately surrender- and we should go to no lengths to offer them a chance to surrender.

No Weakness: Most of all, we must not convince the Islamists that they cannot win. The fifth column amongst us, the ones who root for America’s enemies, they are the greatest enemies of freedom in the world. They are more dangerous than the terrorists for, without them, the terrorists would not act against us. The reason why the Islamists act is not because they are crazy, but rather because history has convinced them that they can win.

Any display of weakness or a lack of resolve at this point, the expression of any doubts about the continuation of the war, the expression of opinions that the United States should withdraw: under the present circumstances, especially with our globalized media, this is no longer merely protest or ‘dissent’: it is treason. The strategy of both the global Islamists and the forces in Iraq is simple: break the will of Americans through a de facto alliance with the traitors in the United States.

We should not dismiss this easily for, after all, it is the only strategy which has ever been used to defeat the United States. America did not lose Vietnam upon this battlefield and it will not lose this war upon the battlefield. But it could still lose it, if we let the traitors win on the home front once more. They, not we, are responsible for the betrayal of freedom in Vietnam and, if we let them, they will be responsible for another betrayal of freedom today. In the days, weeks, and years to come we must fight all enemies of the Untied States: foreign and domestic.