We do not stand alone.

Contrary to the story suggested by much of the world's elite media, our boys do not fight alone. It is true, however, that our military allies are few. And thank G-d for that!

On the eve of battle, Lt. Colonel Tim Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of The Royal Irish, addressed his men on the Kuwait-Iraqi border. The London Times' Sarah Oliver reported, "Wearing his kukri, the Gurkha blade that he is entitled to carry as a Gurkha commander, Colonel Collins spoke to his 800 men, an arm of Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, at Fort Blair Mayne, their desert camp 20 miles from the Iraqi border."

It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive, but there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign.

We will put them in their sleeping bags, and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow.

The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his Nemesis, and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls, and they are stoking the fires of Hell for Saddam.

He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done. As they die, they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity.

We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them. There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send.

As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out, if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory.

It is a big step to take another human life. It is not to be done lightly.

I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you, they live with the mark of Caine upon them. If someone surrenders to you, then remember they have that right in international law, and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please.

If you harm the regiment or its history by over-enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer. You will be shunned, unless your conduct is of the highest, for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform nor our nation.

It is not a question of if [we will face chemical weapons], it’s a question of when. We know he has already devolved the decision to his lower commanders, and that means he has already taken the decision himself. If we survive the first strike, we will survive the attack.

Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will see things that no man could pay to see, and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous, and upright people than the Iraqis. You will be embarrassed by their hospitality, even though they have nothing.

Don’t treat them as refugees, for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you. If there are casualties of war, then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning, they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.

As for ourselves, let’s bring everyone home, and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now is north.

While I do not agree with Col. Collins' claim that we are fighting to "liberate" the Iraqi people, mine is a piddling complaint, in the context of all that he said. The old soldier invoked the glory and the horror that are war, while never losing his humanity, and while demanding that his men never lose theirs. That is a tall order to fill.

Note too that while American G.I.s did hoist the Stars and Stripes following their first victory, they quickly took them down again.

'America Does Not
Play Well with Other Nations'

In the wee hours of Tuesday night, I received a letter from Chinese dissident Pan Hu, who criticized my last column, and complained that America is alienating the world.

If I were an anti-American strategist, possibly sitting somewhere in Paris, Moscow, or Beijing, I'd be totally thrilled if you were in charge of US foreign policy. Your patience with pesky multilateral institutions is running low, but so is the international community's tolerance for the cowboy attitude you bring to the world stage.

(He really said "cowboy"! This is the sort of thing that's a self-caricaturing cliche, when it comes in e-mails from Germany. But from Greenwich Village?! Does Pan waste his days and nights hanging out with frivolous Europeans in McDougal Street cafes?)

There is no such thing as the "international community," a rhetorical fiction advocates employ to suggest they enjoy much greater support than they in fact have.

Pan argued that we are being shunned by the world, and implied that to be unpopular, is to be in the wrong. Ultimately, Pan assumes that leadership itself is evil.

"'Let them hate, so long as they fear' is not an acceptable policy for a civilized Western nation," he continued, "especially one that possesses such disproportionate global might."

Such talk was echoed by the reporter who at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Friday press conference, suggested that America will be seen by the world as a bully, because we are trying too hard for his taste, to win the war. A corollary to such thinking, is that too few American G.I.s are dying, leading to "disproportionate" casualties. Such critics will surely be heartened by reports of American POWS being executed, in violation of the Geneva Convention (which we have scrupulously honored, in both Gulf wars) by the Iraqis.

(Coalition forces are in fact showing a restraint never seen in the annals of war, in bowing to political pressure, to prevent civilian casualties. Hence, American and British Marines waited for hours outside a building at Umm Qasr, in a situation that conventional methods would have mastered in minutes. And yet, such restraint wins us no friends. Indeed, on Sunday, BBC reporter Ben Brown opined that, "Umm Qasr is a small place, but a big embarrassment for the Americans.")

Indeed, Pan went on to imagine that the entire world might join together, in a crusade to defeat America. Pan speculated with too much relish for it not to have been his own hope. According to him, we're a bully, when we win without a mob to help us, and because we are not part of a mob, we deserve to be stomped to death by a mob. Such "heads, I win, tails, you lose" logic is a classic expression of hatred. Like so many critics, Pan Hu is not angry, because we don't have more allies; he is angry, because he wants Saddam Hussein to prevail.

If the world's other Great Powers coordinate their actions in an anti-American axis and enlist the support of not only the Islamic but the entire Third World, the lone superpower will be handcuffed. Pro-American governments everywhere will fall like flies: Thanks to people like you, nowadays it's a political liability to be pro-American! It's just the kind of humiliation that our adversaries want to inflict on us.

"Us"? Who is "us"?

Did I mention that Chinese "dissident" Pan Hu leads a live of safety, prosperity, and privilege, in New York, as a student at the overpriced, private university, NYU? Today, not only do Americans have to put up with foreign nationals who, from halfway across the world, wish destruction upon America, but with immigrants who do so while enjoying our hospitality, and who live better than most Americans, right here at Ground Zero. (If the Anti-Americans' fantasies of a world that defeats America came true, they would lose out on their luxuries. Well, I never said they were logical.)

Being unpopular, being shunned, is often a measure of honor. The herd may just run off a cliff. Or it may simply stand in place, chewing its cud, until it is slaughtered. Critics, including but not limited to Pan Hu, emphasize America's unpopularity in the world, while ignoring the popular support for the war right here at home. People seek for majorities -- or even minorities -- on their behalf; such is the nature of political rhetoric.

In any event, a policy's rightness stands in no necessary relation to its degree of popularity.

But if one is convinced that one is right on the facts, and about what must be done, to yield to mere pressure, as opposed to superior arguments, is a sign of moral depravity. Like so many other critics of the war, privileged "dissident" Pan Hu attacks my conviction that the U.S. is in the right. To him and his comrades, I say, Why are you so certain of the rightness of the French, the Germans, the Russians and the Chinese?

Why do the Pan Hus come to America (or stay here, if their parents brought them here), rather than the nations they consider so superior to us? They can't live as well elsewhere. Anti-Americanism pays best ... in America! And yet, like so many American leftists, they engage in what one observer has called "reverse loyalty" -- loyalty to whosoever is opposed to America.

The opposition to America's prosecution of the war, is not based on moral considerations. In France's case, it is based rather on jealousy of America's power, the opportunism of having illegally sold Iraq military parts (illegal arms, in Germany's case), a billion-dollar oil business with Saddam Hussein, and having earlier sold Hussein a nuclear reactor, with which he openly sought to produce nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel. (In 1981, Israeli air power destroyed the reactor.)

Ultimately, opposition to America is not a reaction to perceived American "arrogance," but perceived American weakness. On 911, the Arab world may have cheered openly, but many of our critics and so-called allies cheered privately. Seeing America's blood in the water, they sought to snare us in the bureaucratic nets of the U.N., while siccing terrorism's sharks on us.

And yet, on the eve of battle, the French suddenly offered to help us, should the Iraqis attack us with chemical and/or biological weapons. Should we have embraced such an "ally"? But of course, not. The French would have contributed nothing to victory, while looking out for their investments, and making mischief with the peace, as they have done in wars they had little or nothing to do with winning, since 1866.

America's enemies cheered, as the Turks refused our overtures and the bribes we offered them, to get them on board. While refusing to fight alongside us, the noble Turks have now sent up to 1,500 soldiers into northern Iraq, in addition to the units already in the region. As a Fox News reporter observed with droll understatement on Saturday, "Turkish troops are there for humanitarian reasons, to aid the influx of refugees, though how tanks could aid refugees, one wonders."

The Turks' incursion was with the hope of butchering Kurds, and looting northern Iraqi oil fields. Since the Turks are Moslem, Leftists are silent about their particular brand of unilateralism.

G-d save us from such allies!

Jimmy Carter has written that it is incumbent upon George W. Bush, to convince the world to support us. Carter, who is destined to go down in infamy as having sought, in wartime, both domestically and abroad, to undermine one of his White House successors, used weasely language, to make it seem as if George W. Bush had been elected president of the world -- but a curiously impotent president -- rather than president of the U.S. of A.

The Last Hard Men

But we do not fight alone. Two stouthearted men, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have sent men to fight alongside our own.

Mr. Howard argued to the Australian public, 71 percent of which, according to the newest polls, opposed allying with the U.S., that such an alliance was lawful, in Australia's interest, and that it was essential to maintain Australia's "fifty-year" alliance with the U.S., in the face of the North Korean threat.

The Americans have helped us in the past and the United States is very important to Australia's long-term security. It is critical that we maintain the involvement of the United States in our own region where at present there are real concerns about the dangerous behavior of North Korea.

With all due respect to Mr. Howard, however, this has been Tony Blair's finest hour.

During the Clinton years, I was no fan of Blair. The man is a socialist, and I am not. And yet, when America needed him, he was our most stalwart ally. Israel is our ally, but it is also our client. The United Kingdom is not our client. Tony Blair risked his political life, going against huge majorities of Britons, and against his own party, many of whose leaders plotted his demise, or who publicly deserted him, to support America. For that, he will always occupy a special place in my heart.

Blair worked himself to exhaustion, trying to get members of the Security Council to agree to a new, 18th resolution on Iraq, and trying to get members of Parliament to support him. Ultimately, he relied on Tory MPs, who crossed the aisle to support him. Blair prevailed, due to his emphasis that he was trying to get U.N. support, and the realization by millions of Brits, that French PM Jacques Chirac was determined to sabotage diplomacy, by vetoing ANY U.N. resolution. And then, on March 18, came Blair's speech to Parliament, which carried the day.

The Speech