Two Messages for America

Frank Gaffney wonders which of the Two Messages for America will be heard. He is particularly worried that:

Or will it be that we must surrender Iraq to such enemies?  Of course, the latter choice will be dressed up as a "strategic redeployment," clearing the way for what is promised to be a more determined and successful effort to go after al Qaeda elsewhere, notably in Afghanistan and perhaps in Pakistan.

Whatever Democrats (and a few Republicans) may call it, however, the second choice is the one favored by Osama bin Laden.  It would be, as he has called it, a defeat for the United States.  Far from it being the end of the fight with Islamofascists like him and his enablers, such a choice would simply embolden them and result in an accelerated, global metastasizing of the struggle against their ilk.

Emphasis Mine

Already, Mr. Gaffney has conceded the strategic initiative to Osama Bin Laden. OBL is now dictating US policy by boasting about what he could do! No longer is the USA is shaping the events in the Middle East; they are reacting to videos from some guy in hiding.

Yet people, like Mr. Gaffney, do not see it that way. They think the US will have lost if their enemy says that the US has lost.

If people, like Mr. Gaffney, no longer believes the US can shape events at the strategic level, then the US ruling class is beginning to lose control. Why should anyone consider the US to be important if the US ruling class does not think so?

What Mr. Gaffney tried to do in his article was shame Americans into supporting the long occupation of Iraq by making the Americans think that everyone would laugh at them if the US left Iraq. Is the US so weak, that laughter can frighten them?

Even though I write about the eventual decline of the US, the US is stil a powerful nation, but only if it concentrates on its strengths and repairs its weaknesses. Unfortunately, the US ruling class considers military might alone to be America's sole strength without realising that the ideological strengths it still has in people like Michael Moore and Google. What other society could produce icons like these? Both of these came from nothing into world-wide dominance in their own fields.

Yet once again, the US ruling class demonstrates that it does understand the source of its own power, prefering to believe its own bullshit.