Well, Pres. Obama and the Democrats seem to have given up, for the moment, denying that we are really at war.  It is therefore reasonable for us to ask them what they are doing, and planning to do, in order to win that war.  Of course, it is never safe to presuppose that the left-wing of the Democrat Party actually  wants America to win a war.  Pres. Obama  is still on record as saying he is "...not comfortable with the concept of victory; it sounds too much like Emperor Hirohito surrendering on the deck of the battleship Missouri."
     That's right, Mr. President--so what?  Subsequent to that surrender and the imposition of American military occupation government in Japan for about ten years, in order to teach the Japanese the niceties of American-style democracy, have the Japanese started any more wars?  Do they appear likely to start any aggressive wars against us, or anyone, in the foreseeable future?  This is the fruit of the American victory over the Japanese Empire. As Gen. MacArthur observed, "In war, there is no substitute for victory."
     Winning a war, any war, is hard.  Losing is always an easier road to walk down than winning.  The first and absolutely essential condition of victory is that the leaders of the nation--and especially of the government--must want to win the war, must be willing to do hard, difficult things in order to win the war, and must understand the nature of war in general, and of their war in particular, in order to select a winning grand strategy (the generals will present the leaders with several alternative strategies--they always do--the leaders, in our case the Commander-in-Chief and anyone he relies on to help him make final decisions, will select the one they find least objectionable, and proclaim it the certain road to victory: "Who shall prepare himself for battle, if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound?").   
     There are many kinds of war, and many different kinds of grand strategy, each suited to a particular situation,  and the particular characteristics of  the Good Guys--the ones resisting aggression and mass murder (in all America's wars,  that would be us) and the Bad Guys, the aggressors.  In every kind of war, however, victory requires the satisfaction of one or the other of the classic conditions for victory: either the enemies' ability to continue making war must be destroyed, or his will  to continue making war must be broken.  In order to figure out how to accomplish one of these aims, the nation's leaders must first understand the essential nature of war itself, as a distinct human endeavor utterly unlike any other.   What is this essential nature, and how does it differ from  all other enterprises?
     War is a conflict between two or more large groups of people, in which both resort to violence including killing and destruction of anything necessary to achieve victory.  If only one side resorts to killing, because the other side is incapable of resisting (as with the Jews in Europe under the German occupation in WWII, the Armenians in Turkey in WWI, or the Tutsi population in the early stages of the genocide in Rwanda) then we call that not a war, but a massacre. 
     Wars that involve two or more nations are international wars; wars that take place solely within the territory of one nation, and involve only the population of that one nation,  are civil wars.  Wars that are waged not by nations per se, but by warmaking groups such as terrorist organizations, political parties, criminal mafias of large dimension, etc., may be either international or civil, as the case may be.   Now, to a man fighting for his life against a burglar, the struggle is just as awful and just as final as any war--but to his society as a whole, the struggle is not a war, because the fate of the entire nation---all its people, all its territory,  all its institutions--is not at stake.  Neither is the fate of a large fraction of the people at stake.  This is because the size of the aggressor force is too small to threaten the whole society, or any large part of the nation, or any of its institutions.  This kind of aggression is called crime. 
     Now, aggressive war is a crime against humanity, as defined by international law going back to the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crime trials, and to the Kellogg-Briand Treaty which makes it so legally, and in ethical terms of many philosophies which define "just war" and unjust.  But not all crime is war; to define it as such, and thus erase the distinction between war and crime, is to deny the special threat to human civilization posed by war, and to undermine all the special efforts taken by peoples and nations for thousands of years to limit, and hopefully someday prevent, aggressive war--and if we can prevent aggressive war, from being launched by aggresssors,  then of course there will be no need for defensive war--a consummation devoutly to be wished, and which will be welcomed especially by all soldiers everywhere.
     Civilization--indeed, every single nation in history--has created special institutions to deal with criminals, and thus with crime.  And every single nation has found such institutions---courts, police, legal codes, prisons---utterly inadequate to deal with aggressive armies, whether foreign invaders or domestic rebels.  In truth, they have often been found inadequate to deal with large domestic criminal mafias, such as the history of the mafias of Italy in the last century makes clear,  and as the Mexicans and Columbians are also discovering to their regret.  Peoples have everywhere discovered the need to have special armed forces--armies--to deal with the threat of aggressive war; and likewise, they have discovered the need for special legal codes and courts (military tribunals) and special types of prisons as well.  No attempt to defeat an enemy army by arresting every enemy soldier and putting him on trial for disturbing the peace is going to win a war. 
     YET THIS IS WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS DOING BY DECLARING THEY WILL SEEK TO ARREST OSAMA BIN LADEN AND PUT HIM ON TRIAL ALONG WITH KHALID SHEIK MOHAMMED AND THE OTHER TERRORISTS NOW AT GUANTANAMO IN AMERICAN CIVILIAN COURTS. 
     This is so utterly insane as a policy as to raise the question whether Obama--and Eric Holder, and the rest of his selected agents--are really serious about wanting to win the war against the terrorists making war on America, let alone the national governments supporting them--viz., Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and, yes, Libya, still. 
     If it is argued that only certain factions of these governments are supporting and funding and arming and training the terrorists, and only allowing them free sanctuary in certain parts of their own territories (e.g. the northwest region of Pakistan, the Bekaa valley in Lebanon--effectively under control from Syria--etc.) this is a distinction without a difference as far as the victims of the terrorists are concerned--and that includes dead Americans.  If we are to win a war, we must ensure that a nation's territory and armaments and budget are not used to wage war against us, even by using terrorists as cut-outs to attack us with deniability, regardless of whether the nation's politicians are unanimous in their approval of the policy of war against America, or only some of them.  As long as they support war against America, we are at war with them, and cannot allow them to hide behind the burkhas of their less aggressive, but criminally culpable co-rulers.
     If a faction of the government of a nation such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia is waging war against America (and they are),we must deal with them as we dealt with Vichy France and Fascist Italy in WWII--we must force these peoples to choose between those in their government who wish to make war on America, and those who are genuinely willing to fight side-by-side with us against these terrorists, who are the enemies of both of us.  It is futile to try to win the favor of enemies by giving them money, and pretending they aren't really trying to kill us. This is the policy of cowards and fools--and it leads not to victory, but to defeat.  This is how to lose a war.

     What's in a name?  Life and death, sometimes.  Captured soldiers must be cared for according to the Geneva Convention; captured spies may be shot.  "Irregular combatants" dressed in civilian clothes without insignia are...what?  It can be greatly to one's advantage to define the terms of  a dispute, as every lawyer and politician knows.  Throughout much of the world, for most of the last two hundred years, political parties and factions have often been characterized as either of 'the Left' or 'the Right'---terms which do not seem to have any intrinsic political significance, in contrast to 'conservative' and 'liberal'.  Nor do these four terms exhaust the list of labels around which men have, and do today, organized themselves and fought, often to the death.  What do they mean?
     It has been observed that today, in America, 'Left' and 'Right' are associated with completely different political programs, values, and attitudes.  Significantly, one of the crucial differences between them is their attitude toward  the United States itself, their estimate of our impact on the world, and their hopes for our future place in that world. 
     The Left typically denounces America as an evil place, filled with racism, gender discrimination, 'homophobia', exploitation of the poor by the rich, of the working class by the employing class, and even, so help me, of the unemployed by the selfish taxpayers.  You know the spiel---you get it every day in every leftist outlet, and your kids get it double in their highschool and college  classrooms, even in those not directly dealing with politics and social issues.  For the last 25 years, significantly since the impending demise of Marxist Communism became undeniable, Leftists have added denunciation of America's alleged over-consumption of resources and pollution of the ecosphere--leading, natch, to global warming and the imminent destruction of mankind--to America's list of  crimes against humanity.   Anybody got a rope? 
     Not even America's greatest achievements escape the scorn of the Leftists:  we only freed the slaves so we could abandon them to starvation when they were too old to work, we only fought the Fascists to save our own skins, the Cold War was a case of capitalist aggression against the peace-loving Soviet Communists, our production of goods and services sold all over the world is economic and cultural imperialism, and when we put men on the moon, we left behind space junk.
     To these Leftists, America the Powerful is America the Ugly, and they hope and pray--and work diligently--to reduce America's power in the world, whether economic, cultural ('hate America first' is the operational prime directive of every Leftist) or, especially, military.  The academic euphemism for this campaign of denigration and diminution of American power and prestige in the world is to denounce 'American unilateralism' as a modus operandi, and praise the creation of a 'multi-polar balance of power' as opposed to the current 'uni-polar' condition (translation: America as the sole world super-power is to be cut down to size by any means necessary, including, for the most devout Leftists, a massive nuclear attack; it would only be, to quote Jeremiah Wright, "...chickens coming home to roost!...G-- D--- America!  G--D--- America! G-- D--- America!"
     It hardly seems necessary to define in detail the Rightist view of America, and contrast it with this screed of hate.  Let it suffice for the moment to say that normal, sane people who live here, or even elsewhere on this planet, and who admire America's achievements because they see the world as it is rather than through ideological goggles that combine a red--or green--tint with blinders, are grateful for America's contributions to mankind in this century and the last, and hope to see their own countries become, not our enemies, but--well--more like us.  Having thus clarified the differences between the stance of  Left and Right toward America, we may ask:  where do these differences come from?  Why do people think and feel as they do, and not otherwise?
     Well, to put it briefly: Leftists hate America, and see it as the embodiment of Evil, because from the very inception of the first of the thirteen colonies (well, actually, not quite from the beginning; Plymouth Colony started as a communist commune, share and share alike, with property held by the 'company'---it was only after the first winter saw half of them die of hunger and cold that they abandoned communism and adopted competitive private-profit free enterprise as their economic system) we in America have been the living repudiation of every Leftist theory and sentiment in the organization of our national life--social, economoic, and political.
      We have not only established a thoroughly anti-collectivist system in law and custom, but we have, of course, made it so successful that we have become simultaneously the most powerful nation on the planet, and a living advertisement for individual freedom, democrcacy, competitve free enterprise for personal profit, and unlimited intellectual freedom of inquiry and expression, in every field, whether secular or spiritual.  Thus, we have constituted the most powerful bulwark to the success of the Leftist dream of a Leftist world, with democracy, private property, and individual liberty banished along with 'superstitious religion'.  And to top it all off, we won the Cold War and destroyed the Evil Soviet Empire (although not without firing a shot; ever hear of Korea and Vietnam?).
     Yes, you say, but Why are Leftists like that?  Since the advantages of freedom and free enterprise are so obvious ('..by their fruits ye shall know them...") and the examples of proof are so many throughout history, why are there still, 20 years after the collapse of the USSR,  so many people who hold fanatically and violently to the Leftist view?  The answer goes to the nature of man, and of human nature there is no changing, even though the world changes around him...
     When we try to understand why other men do what they do, we first project our own self into their situation and ask, if I were he, what would I do?  This often serves to educate us, but it just as often fails---because, you see, you are not he---and he (or she) may not have the same emotional and psychological makeup as you.  Nothing is more obvious than that different men have different characters--characters derived from their genetic inheritance, their upbringing, and their personal free-will choices. 
     From whichever of these sources, some men have acquired the adult character that marks the Leftist Psychology: a desire to rely on a powerful "other" for their material security (both financial and physical--how many Leftists aquire guns to defend their homes and families?), a desire to rely on others for the  ultimate making of moral decisions (surrender of the personal judgement to the 'party line'), a desire to conform to the values of what seems to them the most powerful social group in their environment---whether that is a huge majority, or a violent minority, or the organized hierarchy of the state. 
     If you note the similarity of these central traits to those once attributed to Nazis by the sociologist Adorno's famous "F (for fascist) Scale", do not be surprised;  you must remember that, contrary to the propaganda put out by generations of leftist and often Marxist professoriat, Fascism and Nazism  ('National Socialism') were and are profoundly Leftist political and social movements, whose chosen form of economic organization--"corporativism"--was an extremely collectivist state-regulated, government-franchised and cartel-organized centrally-controlled command system, with winning and losing firms and individuals selected by the state at every level, nominal private ownership notwithstanding.     When Hitler was made Chancelor of Germany in 1933,  his Nazi colleague Ernst Rohm is said to have exclaimed:  "Wunderbar!  Now we will nationalize all the factories!"  Hitler (who had a better grasp of economics) replied: "Nein--we will not nationalize a single factory;  we will nationalize the factory owners!" 
     Which leads me to one further key defining trait of the Leftist Personality:  The Leftist is in love with power--he is to some degree a megalomaniac, and an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur; thus, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, all typify the breed, representing the type carried to its extreme and, in their cases, equipped, alas, with great powers of intellect, energy, and demagogic oratory; they had 'a gift'. This is not inconsistent with the above-mentioned traits of wishing to be dependent on others; the desire for dependence and the desire for unlimited power over others are both manifestations of a fundamental immaturity of the personal psychology---the possession of absolute, unlimited power, is the only device which permits the immature personality, conceited while lacking in self-confidence, to feel really secure.   Without this power, the leftist must have a protector--the state.  Of course, very few individuals have the intellect, talents,  energy, and luck to rise to high positions in a hierarchy of  power.  Those who do, if they are Leftist Personalities, are seldom able to resist the temptation to abuse their power and become bullies--or tyrants.  TO BE CONTINUED

     As all us oldtimers remember, Nov. 11th was originally created a holiday to commemorate  the date of the ceasefire in the Great War (Aug. 1914-Nov. 11, 1918) which was supposed to put an End To War Forever (as all the statesmen of the time assured us).  Guys like my grandfathers, who were sent Over There after being drafted (really big wars always require really big armies, and hence lots of draftees--and they become really big wars not when it's convenient for our leaders, politically, to institute a draft, but whenever our enemies decide they can get away with an attack with their own really big armies--please remember this) were really overjoyed to still be alive in one piece on Nov. 11, 1918, when so many of their buddies (over 10 million in the allied countries--USA, Britain, France, Italy) were dead, and at least that many crippled for life.  Lest we forget.
      My grandfathers were lucky to come through, but they were equally thrilled to know that whatever the cost, whatever they had been through, they--we--had been victorious.  The Good Guys--our side in that war--had defeated the people who had started the war in the first place for the purpose of conquering their neighbors, stealing their lands (in whole, as with the Austrian aim of annexing Serbia, or in part, as with the German aim of seizing huge territories in the East--consult the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk--or even the Ottoman dream of reconquering Egypt and expanding into the Caucasus) and enslaving their peoples. 
     It was a victory for the principle of Anti-Imperialism, of democratic self-determination for peoples, even if that principle was to be betrayed in many instances at the Versailles conference that followed in 1919.  But the principle was enunciated (thanks to the USA) and many peoples who were ignored in Paris, such as the Indians and the Arabs, the Armenians and the Kurds--and the Jews of Israel--and yes, even the Viets,  Cambodians and Laotians from French Indochina--took note of this principle and went home determined that the last word had not been spoken.  They would make Wilson a prophet,  even if he was without honor in his own country. 
     The peoples of the Allied Powers were simply overjoyed that "The Hun" had been defeated, driven back from their homes--forever.  And not only that, but those warmongers, the Emperors--the Hapsburgs in Vienna, "Kaiser Bill" in Berlin--had been driven from these capitols in flight for, literally, their lives, one step ahead of firing squads of their own people, determined to create democratic societies and political systems so that never again--NEVER AGAIN--could tiny cliques of oligarchs, or single despots, unelected and unaccountable to their peoples, decide,  on their whim, to plunge mankind into the Hell of War.  It was a Great Day for Freedom--and PEACE.  The only thing that spoiled it for my grandfathers was learning that Wilhelm Hohenzollern had been granted refuge in neutral Holland and, in fact, they would not get to "hang the Kaiser!"  as they had been expecting. 
     But what the hell--the important thing was that the Good Guys, the Peace-Loving Democracies, had won the war, the war-mongering dictators had been defeated, and best of all, the evil and futility of aggression was so manifestly proven for all time that no one, anywhere, would ever again dream the nightmare of conquest---certainly not in civilized Europe.  Peoples everywhere were safe.
      My  grandfathers were finally able to come home from Europe, one to look for a wife and a business, the other to return to his clothing store and his wife and their 4 kids.  At least, he said to himself, none of his three sons would ever have to go through what he had, and his brothers and sisters and cousins---and all their wives and husbands and kids and his aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews  in the old country---would now be safe, and could live their lives in peace, if not exactly the plenty and freedom he had found in America.
     There were those who thought the Allies should occupy Germany and Austria, and teach these peoples the customs & content of democracy--but they were in a tiny minority, and ignored.  Instead, the political leaders of the democracies imposed financial penalties on the Germans and Austrians,  and left them to manage their own affairs.  After all, no one in the chanceries wanted to insult their diplomatic colleagues in the Wilhelmstrasse or Vienna by suggesting that they needed tutelage in decent government from the democracies. 
     Thus, the government of Germany descended into the maelstrom of putsch and counter-putsch, of socialist revolution and nationalist reaction, and finally of national-socialist  revolution that brought 'ordnung' to Germany--and, with the Enabling Act, and the Law for the Defense of the Reich und Volk, a single-party dictatorship that was endorsed by a vote of over 90% of the electorate; of course, by then, all political opposition had been outlawed, just as in the communist "elections" in the USSR. 
     Within a few years of coming to power, this national-socialist regime had openly violated the provisions of the Versailles Treaty that limited German military power as a protection for the peace of  Europe.  The Allies could have easily invaded and occupied Germany, and restored democracy and human rights---but that would have meant interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, and the politicians of the democracies, preoccupied with what they considered the far more important issue: "It's the economy, stupid!"---chose to do nothing, and leave the preservation of world peace to the 'soft power' of public opinion, backed up by threat of trade embargoes, in the high moral forum of the League of Nations.
     When Germany abrogated the Versailles Treaty  and announced the creation of the Luftwaffe, the acquisition of tanks and bombers and U-boats, the huge expansion of the Wehrmacht, my grandfathers--both of them--wanted the Allied Powers to invade Germany and put an end to the Nazi state.  My Texas grandfather was sure they would do so within months; how could they not?  My Polish grandfather was more cynical: he expected no good of politicians, even if elected, and courage least of all.
     When Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland, in violation of the provisions meant to assure France that its eastern border was safe forever, both my grandfathers expected  the French to invade Germany, with or without assistance from Britain or the USA.  They were both surprised and disappointed when they did not (we know now that the German General Staff expected this as well, and was prepared to overthrow the Nazi Party and arrest Hitler if the French invaded; to their astonishment, the hugely superior French Army remained supine). 
     When Hitler sent German bombers to develop tactics for aerial bombardment of cities in the Spanish Civil War,  my Polish grandfather began not merely advising, but pleading with his relatives in Poland to come to the USA, or at least get out of Poland and go wherever they could get a visa.  They told him it was crazy to leave a successful business and learn a new language in a new land (he had done so, of course---he was the pioneer of his generation).  And anyway, they pointed out to him, he was an alarmist---no one would ever start another war.   Didn't Hitler constantly declare his love of peace?  Didn't the Germans have a right to national pride?
     When Hitler sent the Wehrmacht to invade and annex the independent nation of Austria, my grandfather Charlie expected the Allies, including America, to send troops to kick them out and restore Austrian independence.  He was rudely awakened to the strength of the isolationist faction in America, even in the White House, when Roosevelt made no move even to encourage such action by Britain and France.  Grandfather Abraham was more sanguine about the anschluss.  He observed resignedly that it was inevitable that the Germans, under Hitler, would absorb--by conquest--the rump Austria, just as they had 'absorbed' the smaller German states 80 years earlier under Bismarck et al. Grandfather Abraham had an understanding of European history equal to any modern American Ph.D., acquired by listening to his parents, aunts and uncles argue about politics over the dinner table in Poland.  It was thanks to this understanding of Europe that he had come to America.
     When Hitler threatened the Czechs in 1938, demanding the ceding of the Sudetenland with all Czechoslovakia's border defenses, grandfather Charlie was certain that Britain, France and Russia would finally stand up to the Nazis and put a stop to German aggression. When Chamberlain and the French Premier caved in at Munich,  and Chamberlain returned waving a treaty which he proclaimed "...guarantees PEACE IN OUR TIME!",  Charlie cussed him out as only a Texan can cuss a damnfool blue-blood foreign diplomat.           
     Charlie was not diplomatic, but a straight-talking Texan--one who understood the nature of men, especially bullies, liars and fools.  He understood the relative value of treaties and armies in restraining warmongers.  He had seen what happened to the Belgians after the Kaiser had invaded their country, deriding its treaty of perpetual peace with Germany as "...a mere scrap of paper." 
     Grandfather Abraham was more than disgusted--he was frightened.   Now he was an American, and a veteran of the US Army Expeditionary Force.  Since the war, he had refused to travel back to Europe, even to visit his relatives.  He offered to help them buy a house if they would just come, but they would not.  Anyway, it was getting harder to obtain visas to the USA.  
     He advised his three sons to get in shape, because there was going to be a war.  Hitler would start it, and they would be drafted. His nephew, who took him seriously, began taking flying lessons.   Winston Churchill, despised as another 'alarmist' by the appeasement crowd, commented that "We have had to choose between war and dishonor.  We have chosen dishonor for now, and we will have war soon enough."
     When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, in violation of the Munich agreement he had signed with Neville Chamberlain, Charlie was too fed up to even write a letter to his congressman.  He knew it would be a waste of time anyway. 
     Grandfather Abraham wrote again to his relatives  in Poland, and they again reassured him.  Even if Hitler wanted to invade Poland, he would never dare.  Didn't Poland have treaties with France and Great Britain, guaranteeing to come to the defense of Poland if attacked?  And no matter how bad relations were between Poland and the Soviet Communists, surely Stalin would never permit Hitler to invade Poland!?  And how could anyone, even the Germans, dream of opposing the mighty Soviet Red Army?  So relax---forget about politics, and tend to business  After all: NO ONE WILL EVER START ANOTHER WAR IN EUROPE, RIGHT?    
     When Hitler and Stalin signed the Hitler-Stalin Treaty of Alliance between Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union in August, guaranteeing Germany every strategic material the Wehrmacht would need to wage war in spite of an  Allied naval blockade--everything from aluminum to zinc, with food, petroleum and steel thrown in in virtually unlimited quantity---Grandfather Charlie was stunned.  Abraham put aside his fears for Europe, and began to fear a German-Russian invasion of the United States, after they had conquered France and the British Empire. 
     The "Pact of Steel", as it was called (in Russian, the "Pact of Stalin"---Stalin liked that) contained a secret codicil which was unknown until Allied soldiers obtained copies of it after the war, agreeing to the mutual German-Russian invasion and division of Poland.  Two weeks later, on Sept. 1,1939, Hitler invaded Poland.  Stalin waited two more weeks, so as to claim he was coming to Poland's defense.  Abraham's nephew Morris said goodbye to my father and his buddies, got on a Greyhound bus headed for Vancouver, and volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
     Asked by a newsman what they should call the "new Great War", Churchill replied: "The 'Unnecessary War'!"  It became known, to avoid embarrassment to the appeasers, as 'World War II'.
     And so, on Armistice Day, Nov.11, 1939, people all over the democratic world wondered what they had done wrong, what blunders they were guilty of, that had led to the resumption of a war by the same nations, the same men--and their sons and nephews and grandsons--that they had thought beaten in 1918.  And this war was destined to kill, in Europe alone, not the 15 million of WWI, but over 50 million....
     Will we, 20 years from now, be sending our sons and nephews to fight the same men, and their sons and nephews, who we ought to civilize thoroughly---really thoroughly--TODAY, so that they will learn not to start aggressive wars? (AND TERRORISM IS AGGRESSIVE WAR).  Will we be faced with the need to fight a huge war after the horror of a nuclear 9-11 murders not thousands, but millions of Americans?
     God Bless you, Charlie and Abraham---you did your part.  Pray that we do ours.

     Pres. Obama is our armed forces' Commander-in-Chief.   He is sworn to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  He must decide which are the greatest threats to America, and how best to deal with them.   If he decides incorrectly, or fails to decide in good time, many Americans will die. 
     The greatest threat is still nuclear annihilation.  While this threat has receded greatly since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it remains real.  Aside from Russia and Communist China, either of which could adopt a hostile policy leading to an attack on America under a future government, there is the prospect of atomic bombs in a few years--or perhaps months--in the hands of the Ayatollahs of Iran, and the fact of hundreds of atom bombs in the hands of the government of Pakistan this moment.  And who will be the government of Pakistan tomorrow?  A clique of corrupt generals? A party of America-hating socialists?  Or the  Taliban? 
     The nuclear age has changed the world forever.  We can never go back to 1944.  Since 1945 we have become complacent: A-bombs have been controlled by the very few governments that possessed them--The USA, Britain, France, Israel, India,  USSR, and post-Mao China. These governments were either democratic and peaceful, or at least sane and rational.  Even if hostile and ruthless, they did not expect to launch a nuclear war against the United States and survive, let alone be greeted by 72 virgins in heaven. 
      The same cannot be said for the salafi moslem fanatics, both sunni and shia, who lead Al Quaeda, Taliban, and Iran.  If they acquire A-bombs, it is more than merely a simple matter of 'nuclear proliferation'.  This term itself is dangerously disingenuous, suggesting as it does only the increase in the number of governments possessing A-bombs, without any hint of the horrendous consequences of the increased likelihood of their actual use.
     Mankind would be better served by using the term 'Hiroshima roulette'; up until recently, there were no governments in possession of A-bombs who were not either democratic and peaceful, or effectively deterrred by the huge preponderance of nuclear arms in the hands of  NATO (USA, Britain, France) and the certainty of massive retaliation against any aggressive use of  nukes or other WMDs.   The nuclear revolver was effectively empty.  But since the acquisition of  A-bombs by Pakistan and Communist North Korea, there are at least two bullets in the cylinder, and Iran will make three.  If any of these governments deliver A-bombs to the terrorist groups they currently use as cut-outs for their war of jihad against the infidels, that will be equivalent to pulling the trigger on a loaded chamber.  This is a game in which time is not on the side of 'peaceful coexistence' as it was in the latter days of the cold war.  From now on, every year that passes is equivalent to another pull of the trigger....
     I have already described how we can prevent the ayatollahs of Iran from acquiring their nuclear toys ("How to Defend the USA Against a Nuclear 9-11").   Let us consider the equally urgent, although much less talked about, threat from the 200+ A-bombs in the uncertain hands of the Pakistani Army.  These weapons, or even a fraction of them, could utterly destroy the United States as a civilized nation--if they were to be detonated in American cities. 
     The Pakistanis have neither missiles nor bombers with sufficient range to deliver them to the USA.  This, however, is irrelevant.  They do possess shipping containers and commercial airliners capable of transporting A-bombs, and 10 tons of lead shielding, (to prevent detection by geiger counter) to any port of entry in the USA.   We currently inspect only about 1% of all incoming cargo, and our ultimate goal is to inspect, someday, only 7%.  
     Pakistan today is locked on the path to civil war, not because of our presence in Afghanistan but in spite of it.  The Taliban was created initially (in the 1980s) by Pakistani religious jihadi fanatics of the deobandi sect, funded by sympathetic co-religionists in the Pakistani armed forces and Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and the Wahabi fanatics among the Saudi royal family.  Whatever the motives of the Pakistani backers of the Taliban, like Dr. Frankenstein they now find themselves utterly unable to control the monster they have created.     
     The Taliban, and their Arab allies in Al Quaeda, are no longer confining their insurgent terror to Afghanistan; for the last several years, they have become more and more murderous and wide-ranging in Pakistan itself, and have often announced their intention of 'islamizing' Pakistan, creating a Taliban-ruled sharia government there just as in Afghanistan.  This is a threat which the ruling elite in Islamabad still refuse to oppose  seriously, in spite of public pronouncements  and highly publicized  military sweeps of Taliban country in Waziristan, largely for the purpose of getting favorable press and plenty of  foreign-aid $ in the USA. 
     The possibility of a Taliban take-over of a Pakistani nuclear arms depot--or even of the entire country in a few years--cannot be discounted.  If the USA withdraws from Afghanistan, or simply fails to defeat the Taliban, allowing Kabul to become a replay of the horrendous disaster that was Saigon in April 1975, with our allies being massacred by our enemies, the Taliban will quickly consolidate their power in Afghanistan and turn their gunsights on Pakistan.  The outcome of such a Pakistani civil war cannot be predicted with certainty, but the death toll can be: it will be in the millions.
     Let us remember what is at stake:  if terrorists can get their hands on one bomb, they can get 20--or 50.  These bombs can then be detonated in as many American cities, simultaneously, one fine Sunday morning.   This is the means of creating a 'world without America'---as Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has called on America-haters the world over to dream of, and work for.  And if the last hundred years teach us anything, it is that nothing is too horrible to be done by human monsters. 
     Whatever strategy or grand strategy our military and political leaders decide to employ in the war against the Taliban and Al Quaeda, they--and we--must be under no illusion that this is a 'war of choice' that we can simply choose to walk away from without condemning a huge number of Americans to a horrible death--not just soldiers in foreign lands, but Americans of all kinds, here in America; and not just thousands, as on 9-11, but millions.   This is a war we must win, however many troops are needed, and whatever sacrifice is called for to support those troops, who are, after all, fighting and dying to protect both us, and our friends and allies in foreign lands. 
     This is the decision that was made last year by Pres. George W. Bush, leading him to send 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan (the last are arriving there only now), a decision that was reconfirmed by the panel led by Bruce Reidel in March of this year when reviewing our policy at the request of Pres. Obama, and which has been reconfirmed most urgently by Gen. MacChrystal in his August report on the war, and by Secy. of Defense Robert Gates.  
     Barack Obama must now make a decision.  For the first time in his brief career as Commander-in-Chief---but not for the last---he must decide whether to  heed the advice of his military and civilian defense experts, and pursue a policy of victory, or a policy of 'compromise' (read 'appeasement') with the 'moderate Taliban' (the ultimate oxymoron!).
     Pres. Obama has said, a propos of Afghanistan and war in general, that he is "not comfortable with the concept of  'victory', it suggests Hirohito surrendering on the battleship Missouri."  [Actually it was the Japanese Foreign Minister, not Hirohito, who signed the surrender.]  The American who received that surrender, Gen. MacArthur, later observed that:  "In war there is no substitute for victory."   Let us pray that this will be Obama's choice.