Winston Churchill's black dog is back. It visited him often, depressing him but never forcing him to give in. The black dog lives in a darkened chamber that some now would push us into. We walked into it on the path out of Vietnam, and were trapped in it for years. It's the same darkened room: too little light to see anything clearly, but just enough to see the outlines of objects. The black dog is there, growling, circling, ready to gnaw on our character and resolve. We know that once we're in, there's no way out because the walls are smooth, there are no windows and there's no doorknob to grab. This is the cell Defeat lives in. Those of us of a certain age remember it well. When last we entered the cell it was 1975, and the black dog was just a puppy, big enough only to bite our ankles. We came out when Ronald Reagan opened the door in 1980. Standing at the threshold now, we can sense that the black dog has grown. Now it may be able to knock us down, and the friends that will be shoved into the room behind us may be killed by it. There's no Reagan coming down the hall behind us. If we go in, we're going to be trapped in the room for a long time. Please, Mr. Bush. Don't push us through this door......
We must win in Iraq!
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Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a contributing editor to The American Spectator and author of Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States (with Edward Timperlake, Regnery 2006) and Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think (Regnery 2004).
