What the Mosul blast means

This morning we're getting word that the evidence shows that this was the work of a human bomb. My first question is pretty obvious...how the hell does a suicide bomber get into a secured area? A valid question, and indeed, a central one.

The media is jumping on this as a tragedy for Bush's second term, and Don Rumsfeld.

But forget that. This is evidence of just how nasty this war really is. We are not fighting armies, but rather a sneaky band of devils who are eager to kill whomever they have to in order to reduce Iraq and then the world to a medieval feudal Wahab-Islamist state.

This killer snuck in and attacked people who were having dinner, not the soldiers at the gates with rifles at the ready. This is not a symmetrical situation where we blast the enemy on the battlefield. This is asymmetrical warfare where we actually have to de-louse cities and kill people where they hide. This is a war against cowardly people who want to subjugate a population.

Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld nor the commanders on the ground can offer assurances that our soldiers are 100% safe. And the media and others in the whining classes have convinced themselves that in this era, we can isolate ourselves from danger while on the front lines. But again, this is war. People die, both good and bad. It is sick, sad, and scary, but this is the price of a free world.

The bad guys will continue to work desperate acts like this because they really know that they are in a corner. These pockets of resistance as they are called are international terrorists who are trying to break our will. Just like it happened 35 years ago. But we can't let it be done.

Mosul reminds us that the war on terror is necessarily a mess. The bad guys can slip through. and as the President has said before, we have to be perfect hundreds of times every day. They have to get lucky but once. The Islamists have no hope of taking on our military head on. They would be decimated in moments. But it's not easy picking the troublemakers out of the crowd of innocents. Sure, there are parallels to Vietnam. But the main difference is that we removed the government that they hated and are establishing a popularly elected government that may love us or hate us. It's about the Iraqis, not U.S. interests. And what is good for the Iraqis is good for the world.

The war on terror is hard, grueling work being done by, yes, the military we have. The military we inherited from Bill Clinton. This won't be over in 2005. It won't be over in 2006. And probably not even in 2007. Amazing things do not often happen overnight, nor are they FedExed to your doorstep. To be done right this will take time. And other little murderers will slip through.

It's all they have--because they're losing.