Australian Prime Minister John Howard hasn't shied away from speaking out on the global intimation campaign against free speech. He's also not about to run away from Iraq, and he understands the consequences of defeat.
Prime Minister John Howard said Wednesday the Iraq mission was not easy, "but we have to ask ourselves is Australia's security enhanced by Western defeat in Iraq." "I ask people to contemplate the impact on the authority of the United State, the impact on the West of a defeat in Iraq," Howard told television's Nine Network. "If people think that is going to strengthen the West, is going to strengthen America and strengthen Australia, I think they have taken leave of their senses." … "America will only leave Iraq when she is satisfied that the Iraqis can look after the situation themselves, and that is our position," he said.
Contrast Howard's position with that of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a supporter of a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, who had this exchange with Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes:
STAHL: Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror? Rep. PELOSI: No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan. That is what... STAHL: But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now? Rep. PELOSI: (Unintelligible). They have. STAHL: Well... Rep. PELOSI: The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. That means--they'll stay there as long as we're there. They're there because we're there.
So the "war on terror is the war in Afghanistan" but not in Iraq, even though, by her own admission, terrorists have moved into Iraq. The terrorists in Iraq, Pelosi says, will "stay there as long as we've there." Pelosi didn't say where the terrorists would go once we exited. Some may stay in Iraq; others may go to Afghanistan, South Asia, Somalia, Europe, or the Pacific Rim. In this regard, Pelosi joins the other Howard who also believes the only " fight on terror" is in Afghanistan.