Daniel Henninger: Is America Losing the Will to Fight?

Daniel Henninger, from the WSJ Opinion Journal (6-17-05):

[Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.]

...It is possible to extend this headline exercise of Iraq news to the horizon. As a physical principle no less established than the second law of thermodynamics, U.S. opinion polls in June outputted these headlines and stories:

June 12: "A Growing Public Restlessness: The June [Post-ABC News] survey found that 58% of its 1,002 respondents now disapprove of the way Bush is handling both the economy and the situation in Iraq.

June 11, AP: "Only 41% said they support Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, also a low-water mark." The "war," of course extends no further than these bombing reports.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the maestro of the Iraqi civilian slaughterhouse, has produced a steady shower of human blood, and as often happens, blood has been a public-opinion downer. Perhaps in his next life al-Zarqawi can come back as an American marketing consultant. Having established there is a U.S. market for American-associated death in Iraq, such as the front page of the Yahoo! news portal, al-Zarqawi is supplying it with daily product. The up-or-down polls he reads are his profit-and- loss statement.

The June ABC-Washington Post poll asked: "All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?" 58% said No...

...No matter how fat the diet of stories about Iraq suicide bombings or Gitmo shoved down our throats and no matter how many distraught opinion-poll results come back up, no serious person can allow post-9/11 American security to be reduced to that.

The death march of homicidal zombies in Iraq is trying to push us toward accepting the idea that acts of unrestrained violence against other human beings is now a normal part of politics. It is not normal. Any civilized person should want to resist the normalization of civilian killing as a political act--whether in Iraq, Spain, Indonesia or Kashmir.

These matters have been at the heart of John Bolton's marooned nomination to the U.N. Mr. Bolton's adversaries criticize his impatience with large bureaucracies tasked to the war on terror, such as the State Department, and worry he won't respect the U.N. "system."

The U.N. itself has never been able to even agree on a definition of terror. A high-level U.N. panel bluntly concluded last year: "Lack of agreement on a clear and well-known definition undermines the normative and moral stance against terrorism and has stained the United Nations' image."

Little wonder, then, that our own news coverage of these repeated slaughters of civilians in Iraq also lacks any normative or moral context unfavorable to the perpetrators. And little wonder that in such a world the only "side" many people in the U.S. feel comfortable with is heading for the exits.