An Inexhaustible Voice

After watching and listening to small portions of General Petreaus' remarkable testimony over the past couple of days, for its sheer endurance alone, before the House and Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, I was reminded of Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which is also a fitting reminder as we memorialize the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

After watching the testimony today, a couple of the greatest successes of the War on Terror (and Iraq, specifically) were never discussed by Petreaus:

1) That the War in Iraq has had the effect of bringing the fight to the enemy, of creating a brushfire in the Middle East with which to engage the terrorists (as evidenced by the sky is falling reports by Left-leaning outlets that the war is causing more terrorists to be recruited, I say better there than here).

2) There has not been a terrorist attack since September 11, 2001 --Knock on wood). However, six years of peace is an excellent track record for a President that is constantly being barraged by harrasing editorials and an unappreciative Congress for implementing strategies that has protected America's security.

As Aristotle said in Nichomachean Ethics:

"We . . . make war that we may live in peace."

For those so anxious to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to end many of the other programs that have kept our nation safe, they best beware of the consequences, which could be catastrophic.