V for Victory! (The Way It Wasn't)

President Obama's recent address to the country about Afghanistan was perplexing, to put it mildly. Basically, we are adding 30,000 troops to the fight but will begin withdrawing them in July, 2011. Let's go back to the day after Pearl Harbor and see how President Roosevelt handled things:

"Washington, D.C., December 8, 1941. President Roosevelt announced today that the United States will do whatever is necessary to totally defeat the Axis powers after the duplicitous Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. "They have roused a sleeping giant and we will accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Axis!" said Roosevelt after his address to a joint session of Congress. The President set July, 1944 as the date for withdrawing American troops from both the European and Pacific theaters and said he hoped the Axis would cooperate."

Well, maybe it didn't happen quite that way. Ronald Reagan said it well, "Here's my strategy on the Cold War, we win; they lose." If you are not going to seek victory, then get out before a lot of good men and women get killed for nothing.