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Liberals need an exit strategy

Clifford D. May’s latest column at Townhall.com is one of his best yet, and strikes a chord with me.  It couldn’t be more timely in light of North Korea’s announcement that (suprise!) they actually do have nuclear weapons just like the Bush administration has been saying for years, much to the consternation of President Bush’s irrepressible (and increasingly dumb-sounding) doubters.

Clifford May calls his column “Choosing between a strategy for victory—or for defeat” but it might well have been called:  “Democrats need an exit strategy”, and they have one—it’s called “Keep Asking ‘What is America’s Exit Strategy?’ To Hide Our Lack Of An Actual Workable Sound Policy Idea”.  Yes it is a long title for a strategy. 

When a politician or a journalist talks about an “exit strategy” from Iraq, there is only one appropriate response: Roll your eyes and leave the room.

Imagine some senator or reporter during World War II asking Roosevelt and Churchill to define their “exit strategy” from Europe and the Pacific. They probably would not have dignified the question with an answer. Or, if they had, they might have said: “We have a strategy for victory. The alternative would be a strategy for defeat. Do we look like defeatists to you?”

Indeed, the leaders of the Anglo-American alliance made no attempt to find a formula that would bring troops home early at the price of, say, leaving Hitler in command of just a few central European countries.

On the contrary, the price that Germany and Japan paid for having become America’s enemies was that they had to choose between “unconditional surrender” and catastrophic destruction.

But a few years later, we did accept a substitute for victory in the Korean War. The consequence: More than half a century later we are menaced by a second generation despot in Pyongyang, heading a regime that has been building nuclear weapons and exporting nuclear technology to those who despise us.

Joel Johannesen
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