"No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

That was the battle cry of my generation, or rather it was the retreat from battle cry of my generation. The great Mohamad Ali said it, and like so many other things he said, he was of course right about this one. No Viet Cong ever did use the N word against him and truth be told no Viet Cong ever did a bad thing to me. That is because the Viet Cong stayed in Vietnam and once we left they didn't follow us.

That perhaps is why it is so frightening to see the ghosts of the Vietnam War protest movement haunting the current war in Iraq. Bring the troops home. End the war. Stop the carnage. Throw the Republican bastards out. I embraced it the first time around. To do so this time, however, I believe is suicide.

Unlike the Viet Cong, Islamo Fascist terrorists have done a good deal worse than use racial epithets against us. They killed close to three thousand of us on 9/11. They tried to do the same in the first World Trade Center bombing, same characters, same building. The only problem was the placement of the bomb. They have announced their intent to do it again, only worse. And they are not alone. It is not only Al—Qaeda but the Iranian Islamic revolution and the terrorist organizations they now back. And please don't kid yourself that this is a result of Iraq or Afghanistan or George Bush. The first act of the Iranian revolution was to kidnap an entire embassy full of American hostages. The current President of Iran was one of the hostage takers in his halcyon student days. That was his coming out party, and now he's the one who not only envisions a world without Zionism but a world without America as well.

I know you don't like Bush. I don't like Bush. Nobody likes Bush. Fair enough. He lied to you. He mangles the language. You can't trust him. He's in hock to Haliburton. He has some weird daddy complex. Whatever you want to believe about him, believe it. Fair enough. You win. No arguments.

And you don't like the war. You were lied to. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Bush and the neocons made it all up. They duped us. They duped you. They duped me. They duped Hillary and Kerry. They duped us all. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe. Done deal. Not only did they dupe us, but they dicked it up, made every mistake in the book.

Pick whatever argument you like. They should have had more troops. They should have had less troops. They should have listend to Chalabi. They shouldn't have listened to Chalibi. Bremer was right. Bremer was wrong. Rumsfeld's a bozo. Bozo could have done a better job. I'll sign on to any part of it you like. They said this is a part of the war on terror, and of course that's a lie too.

Ooops.

What do you mean, oops?

Well, what I mean is that part is actually true.

What part?

The part about Iraq being a part of the war on terror.

You've got to be kidding. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11! There was no connection between Iraq and Al—Qaeda!

Maybe not, but there is now.

Well, who's fault is that?

Doesn't matter.

What do you mean it doesn't matter?

I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how we got there. It doesn't matter how you think you were lied to. It doesn't matter if you think there was a connection between Sadam and Al—Qaeda. The only thing that matters now is that both Al—Qaeda and Iran and the terrorist groups they back and inspire believe that Iraq is their decisive battle. They have chosen it as the place where they will defeat America, and unlike the Viet Cong, they will not stay put. They will follow us home.

Bush opponents like to quote the National Intelligence Assessment which stated that America has been made less safe because its involvement in Iraq has become a recruiting aid for terrorists. That is of course true. But those same people ignore the flip side of that equation, which the National Intelligence Assessment made equally clear. If the Al Qaeda and Iranian backed terrorists win in Iraq they will be further encouraged in their war against us. If they are defeated, then the defeat will go heavy with them; and we will indeed be the beneficiaries.

To put it in its simplest terms, we can quit the battle field but the battle field will not quit us.

Whether we like it or not, we are in a war with Islamist terrorists. It is not a 'supposed war,' or a war with quotation marks around it. Al—Qaeda declared its war against America years before 9/11. 9/11 was simply their Pearl Harbor. To suggest, as some have, that America and its actions in Iraq are the only thing that stands between us and peace with the Islamo terrorists would be like saying that after Pearl Harbor the reason we were at war with Japan was because we engaged the Japanese at Wake Island. The truth is much more uncomfortable. We are at war with Islamist terrorists because they want to kill us. That is not hyperbole, nor is it metaphor. They have announced it as clearly and as plainly as humanly possible. Al—Qaeda has declared we have the following choice: convert to Islam or die.

Well, the intelligentsia amongst us would have us believe that is just a Karl Rove ploy meant to frighten voters into voting for Republicans. There also lurks behind the knowing condescension the assumption that no matter what Al—Qaeda or the Ayatollahs might want in their demented fantasies, they can never really accomplish it. Maybe a few thousand die here or there, but the rest of us will still sip our lattes and shine it on. They can't, after all, cripple America.

Actually, that's not the case.

Just as the Spanish Civil War was a preview of what European Fascism had in store for the world, so too was the recent Israel/Hezb'allah war a preview of what Islamo Fascism has in store.

Consider this, right now as you read this, northern Mexico is by and large ruled not by its own government nor its police, nor even its military. It is ruled by drug cartels who cut off the heads of policemen and stick them up in American tourists resorts like Rosarita Beach. Like those drug cartels, Hezb'allah makes a good deal of its money which it uses to finance its terrorists activities, in the drug trade, primarily out of the Beka Valley.

Hezb'allah today has hundreds if not thousands of its terrorist operatives already in place in South America. It would be a small matter indeed for Hezb'allah units to collude with the drug cartels now ruling northern Mexico. Then with little more than the rockets already in Iran's arsenal, with even a modest nuclear warhead (the kind which most estimates believe will be within Iran's capabilities to produce in no more than a few years) those same Hezb'allah cells could take out the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach. While a similar unit, operating from southern Canada could just as easily take out the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Those two acts by themselves would plunge the United States into a depression which would last decades. Such a scenario is not only possible, it is highly probable; especially if the US is defeated in Iraq and the Islamist terrorists believe they are on a roll. And make no mistake about who it is they want to kill. If you are a Christian they want to kill you. If you are a Jew they want to kill you. If you are a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Taoist, or a Jain, or a Muslim of a slightly different creed, they want to kill you. If you a secularist and believe in gay marriage, gay adoption, gay rights, or gay pride, they want to kill you. If you watch movies and like rock n' roll, if you read Playboy, or Cosmo, if you wear mini—skirts, or 'allow' your daughter, wife or girlfriend to do so, they want to kill you. When they say convert to Islam or die, they mean convert to Islam or they will kill you.

I know you don't like that. I know you don't want to believe that. I know you would like to believe only a cross eyed, red necked, right wing, apocalyptic, bozo hick like George Bush would believe such a thing, but that won't let you off the hook. However much you don't want to believe it, however much you would like it to go away, however loudly you whistle in the dark and comfort yourself with the sweet thought of Nancy Pelosi hanging her drapes over Denny Hastert's fat, dead, humiliated body, it is still true.

If we quit Iraq they will follow us home. If they are defeated in Iraq, it does not mean the end of them. It does mean, however, that the wind will be knocked out of them. It means they will have suffered a set back that will take them almost as long to overcome as it took us to get over Vietnam.

But you say that we've already lost in Iraq. If you don't believe it just watch CNN.

Well here is the odd truth, which for some reason, absolutely no one seems to realize. Precisely because Iraq is such a mess, the terrorists now believe it is all but inevitable that they will win. They can smell victory. They can taste it. They are ramping up the equivalent of their air craft carrier landings under the banner 'Jihad Accomplished.'

But for the first time, since World War II, for some insane reason, the previous paradigm is reversed. In every other conflict of this type one always hears the sentence 'All the Viet Cong have to do, or Hezb'allah has to do, or all the Resistance has to do in order to win is simply survive.' Thus by having outlasted the lumbering oaf, the West will be defeated. Well, guess what, in Iraq of 2006 precisely because they so smell victory, for the first time since World War II, all America has to do in order to win, is not lose.

Let me say it again, in Iraq, all America has to do in order to win is not lose.

All America has to do in order to defeat Al—Qaeda and the Iranian backed terrorists is not lose to them.

And all we have to do in order to not lose to them is not to leave before the Iraqis can bring the violence to a manageable level.

They don't have to end the violence.

They just have to be able to bring it to a manageable level, a level in which they can maintain an elected government and manage their affairs with a minimum of help or indeed presence of US forces.

All we have to do to win is not leave until then.

Why do I believe that this is so? Because it is precisely what the terrorists are telling us. This is their Tet offensive. This is their attempt to influence our elections. If they can help elect a Congress that will cut off funds for the war, then just as was the case in Vietnam, that is precisely what will happen. And when it happens we will leave. In defeat.

All we have to do to win is not lose.

All we have to do to not lose, is not leave until the Iraqis can manage the violence.

Not defeat it.

Not eliminate it.

Just manage it.

If we stay till then it is the Islamo terrorists who will be gasping for breath.

It will be Midway instead of Pearl Harbor.

Dan Gordon is the writer of such films as The Hurricane, Murder in the First, Wyatt Earp, and The Assignment.  He served as a captain in the reserves in the IDF during the recent war.