The aim of victory

Claudia Rosett:

No doubt, given the option, Americans would prefer a world without war. But the world of the early 21st century does not provide that luxury. War arrived in the skies over New York and Pennsylvania and Washington 12 years ago this month — and it is not over. War came to the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi a year ago this month, killing a serving American ambassador for the first time in 33 years. As my colleague Michael Ledeen reminds us, Iran’s regime has been conducting a terror war against America since Tehran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Syria’s regime is part of an axis profoundly hostile to the free world, in which Iran is making nuclear weapons, and North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests. A rising despotism in Russia ships arms to Syria and heaps insults on the American president. China, chief broker for the illicit traffic of both Iran and North Korea, is building up its military and jostling its neighbors. No, I am not calling for America to go to war against all enemies; there are many fronts on which the struggle between freedom and tyranny may be waged, But it would greatly aid the cause of a free and secure America if when we do go to war, we are rallied with the aim of victory, and fight to win.