The Primary Battleground

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, writes in the Wall Street Journal about "The Left's Iraq Muddle."

After reminding us that we had ample reason to liberate Iraq from Saddam, Kerrey attempts to focus the left on the consequences of accepting defeat in Iraq:

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically, "yes."

The country needs to debate Iraq. We need to step away from left's eyes wide shut rush to leave Iraq as soon as they can find the votes and focus on what happens if the left gets their way.

Al Qaeda and its bands of terrorist thugs attacked us on 9/11 because the organization thought we didn't have the stomach to fight. Following many attacks on Americans in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s culminating in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, America withdrew. Our response to attacks during Bill Clinton's presidency, America again withdrew this time from Somalia after U.S. troops were attacked in Mogadishu in 1993. The 1993 attacks on World Trade Center, the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, resulted in angry words, sometimes accompanied by cruise missiles to remote and uninhabited places.

Last week, Bernard Lewis, asked Was Osama Right? Lewis writes that America's response to 9/11, so different previous American practice, shocked the Islamist extremists and required a revision of their assessment that America did not have the stomach to fight them.

Lewis warns that the public discourse inside the U.S. is persuading Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory.

We will regret a failure to consider how our enemies will react if we give up in Iraq and allow the terrorists to win the war to overthrow the government of Iraq.