Why Bush Must Win

The Islamists must not perceive a victory. David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen ends an interesting essay with:

On the one hand, the Americans remain under extraordinary international pressure to retreat; on the other, the appeal of the Islamist ideology is still growing, and finding its voice through such mass media as Arab satellite television.

If, for instance, a President Kerry were to take the Americans out of Iraq, mission unaccomplished as in Vietnam, we would see a storm-tide of Islamist triumphalism, and the belief would quickly spread through the Muslim world that an aggressive, Jihadist, politico-religious Islamism is the wave of the future.

The same, of course, would happen if a President Bush did that. But everything we know about the man suggests he wouldn't.

One of my reasons to pray for his victory in the coming U.S. election is because he wouldn't. I don't think he fully grasps the dimensions of the conflict -- nobody does. But he knows they are large, he knows the difference between advancing and retreating, and that's really all he needs to know, for now. The rest we learn as we go along.