The Arab Street disappoints the MSM

Mark Steyn notes that the popular support for Al Qaeda seems to be mostly in the minds of Western journalists.

He also has this to say about the antiwar element:

n war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

As 9/11 fades into the past, that's an increasingly hard argument to make. Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak - which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in EU capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions - the Kyotification of foreign policy.

"Demonstrating the will to lose" remember that when your kid or grandkid asks what the demonstrations are for. The greatest victory a lot of people in my generation had was convincing our leaders to leave our erstwhile allies in South Vietnam high and dry after we pulled out. That's why you see all these goofs out reliving their college days at "peace" marchs.

Funny how you never see any signs that say "Break our word! Dishonor our treaties!" or "To hell with your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!" or "Give the terrorists what they want!"