What Does Defeat Look Like?

Allow me to throw this out on the table for your perusal:

Let's say the Democrats press the issue and manage to force President Bush, somehow, into setting a timetable for leaving Iraq shortly. Maybe they cut the funding, maybe they rally the country.

And let's say we do leave Iraq.

I have a few questions:

Then what?

• What do we do with our military? Do they come directly home? Stationed in an adjacent country? New airbase(s) built? Completely deactivated? Held on standby?
• When the Iraqi Civil War starts in earnest, do we react? Or sit and watch the bodies pile up and float by en masse?
• When foreign American targets begin exploding, how do we react?
• When domestic American targets begin exploding, how do we react?
• When Iraq is not the focal point of the War On Terror, what is?
• Or should we simply wait until another American building goes down, our own "Madrid Bombing?" Our own "London Tube Bombing"?

What form will defeat take?

What will defeat look like?

Some in the Blogosphere have indicated this not defeat, but a logical result.

I would ask: there is retribution for Bush's mistakes and there are the overarching consequences from various policies. Balance "getting out of Iraq" vs. what I call "the logical extension."

And that's only the threat from without -- the external threat. What about the threat from within?

Already we in the US are being corrupted from within. Already Muslim taxi drivers in Minneapolis, Minnesota are refusing service to fares who carry alcohol with them. Already the scope of demand made by Muslims in Minneapolis is expanding:

Beryl Dsouza was late and in no mood for delays when she stopped at a Target store after work two weeks ago for milk, bread and bacon. So Dsouza was taken aback when the cashier -- who had on the traditional headscarf, or hijab, worn by many Muslim women -- refused to swipe the bacon through the checkout scanner.

"She made me scan the bacon. Then she opened the bag and made me put it in the bag," said Dsouza, 53, of Minneapolis. "It made me wonder why this person took a job as a cashier."

In the latest example of religious beliefs creating tension in the workplace, some Muslims in the Twin Cities are adhering to a strict interpretation of the Qur'an that prohibits the handling of pork products. Instead of swiping the items themselves, they are asking non-Muslim employees or shoppers to do it for them.

This situation is happening in America. Now. This is a major American city. And already the prevailing cry isn't: "let them find other jobs."

The prevailing cry is: "we capitulate."

Note to self: one very popular Democrat presidential candidate is a Muslim.

Where do we draw the line? Is this the beginning of a New Dark Ages, when Islam finally succeeds in overtaking Europe due to prevailing demographics (refute, if you will, that this isn't already occurring) and has that same goal for our country?

Is it merely a simplistically-pat statement to say that terrorism will do no more than follow us back to our own country?

If you aren't smart enough to figure this out already . . .

Never forget.

BZ