This Is No Time To Lose Our Nerve

Victor Davis Hanson has a must-read piece in National Review Online, "The Great Stampede: Conservatives are losing their nerve on Iraq." Excerpt:

[T]he latest criticism is more troubling, since it often comes from the “my
perfect war, your lousy peace” school that, for some reason, never critiques the
three-week removal of Saddam Hussein. Instead, it defends its evolving
opposition to the war by advancing particular pet theories of reconstruction
that were never followed. Rarely do we hear that most postbellum efforts are
long, messy, and necessary, much less that the essence of war is lapse and
tragedy, with victory going only to those who in the end err the least and
endure. Anyone back in the United States can post facto write up a list of what
ought to have been done in Iraq amid the heat and fire; but they at least need
to factor in the conditions at the time that led the supposedly less bright on
the ground not to anticipate their own inspired wisdom from afar.

I hope lots of people read it.