THE LAST HELICOPTER

The Belmont Club introduces us to the concept of "The Last Helicopter", via the excellent writer and Middle East analyst Amir Taheri.

...the enemy, unable to defeat the US military in the field, has embarked on a strategy Amir Taheri called "Waiting Out Bush". Or in Belmont Clubese, the enemy having lost the military war now hopes to win the political war. Taheri says that many Arab capitals are simply waiting for a new administration to ride to their rescue. The trick is simply to "wait out Bush".

"Hassan Abbasi has a dream--a helicopter doing an arabesque in cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are the last of the "fleeing Americans," forced out of the Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) by "the Army of Muhammad." Presented by his friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," Mr. Abbasi is "professor of strategy" at the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical administration.

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last helicopter." ... According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of "waiting Bush out" is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere."

As I have written repeatedly on this blog, we can only be defeated HERE, not over there. If the American people elect a Congress and, later, a President who repudiates the Bush Doctrine, then the Islamists will win a great victory, which will lead to an even bloodier, more destructive war later down the road.