[...] WHETHER the issue is domestic law and order or fighting foreign wars, the great fallacy of the left is the belief that protecting the "human rights" of killers is more important than the elementary human right of the vast majority - the innocent - to live unmolested by murderers and fanatics.

Whether the cry is "Free Mumia!" or "Close Guantanamo!" or "Bring the Troops Home Now!" the consistent purpose is to rescue killers from justice - no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens here or to the millions of Iraqis who truly desire peace.

This situation was bad enough when save-the-cop-killers/pity-the-terrorists ideology only infected the left. But political correctness has insinuated itself so deeply into our collective thinking that even the chest-thumping Bush administration refused to take on Iraq's fanatical killers - with the result that Iraq is now frankly ungovernable.

The administration ignored an ironclad rule of conflict in failed societies: A fraction of 1 percent of the population, armed and determined, can destroy a fragile state. If you are not willing to kill that fraction of a percent, the remaining 99-plus percent will suffer terror, massacre and chaos.

Our weakness of will and wishful thinking made Iraq safe for our enemies. They can walk the streets unarmed. We can't.

[...] magine how different the situation would be had our forces been allowed to plan for a military occupation with rational rules of engagement, if looters had been shot and if we had taken on the militias as they were forming. Had we occupied the Sunni Triangle with sufficient numbers of troops and had we killed the Shia provocateur Muqtada al-Sadr as he began assassinating peaceful rivals in mid-2003, Iraq would've had a chance.

Now it's too late. Too late for more troops. Too late for the massive crackdown that would be required. Too late to restore the rule of law after we enabled the spread of lawlessness. Too late for the average Iraqi to live in peace.

It's up to the Iraqis now. And they appear to be their own worst enemies.

I wish the world were as innocent as intellectuals pretend. But we're far from the Peaceable Kingdom. If we're unwilling to behave ferociously toward terrorists and thugs, they'll behave with greater ferocity toward the innocent. That's a consistent equation in humanity's moral algebra.

While I disagree that it's already to late to salvage Iraq, Peters' points should be well taken. This left wing PC crap is killing our troops, and the time has come to get tough and get on with the war on terror - with a vengence. The Iraqis are trully their own worst enemies, but America is fast becoming it's own as well. We have become a tool for the terrorists to take kill us with. The time is now to either get down to the business of winning and put the political bickering behind us, or simply save a lot of time and just surrender to terrorism and Islamofascism, and accept the dire and dark consequences of having allowed political correctness and a left wing, Soros-inspired, Democratic party-endorsed, political agenda - to kill us as a people, a culture, and a civilization.

Hat tip - Euphoric Reality