“THE UNITED STATES WILL LEAD, or the world will shift into neutral.” Wise words from President Bush on May 20 to congressional Republicans. From the beginning, the president has made clear that we must lead and win the war on terror. To win the strategic war, we must of course win tactical battles. The central battle in the war on terror is Iraq. Unless we win that battle, we will see America itself, and the world, shift disastrously into neutral in the broader war.

In every war there are crucial turning moments, hard to foresee. They often occur in the midst of public despair about war prospects. Today there is considerable despair over the situation in Iraq. But despair existed in Britain and the United States after the fall of Singapore in World War II–before the U.S. Navy’s astonishing destruction of a Japanese carrier force in 1942 at Midway. In August 1864 there was a widespread belief in the North that the Civil War could not be won. President Abraham Lincoln believed that the war stalemate and the terrible casualties could lead to the election of his opponent, George McClellan, who might repudiate the Emancipation Proclamation and sue for peace on the basis of the status quo ante–a free North, a slave South.