Asymmetic weakness- provoking attacks

What happens when the biggest, strongest guy on the beach starts letting 98-pound weaklings kick sand in his face? Investor's Buisness Daily says it well here (subscription?):

A weak America can never buy conciliation and peace. Weakness is a provocation, an invitation to our foes to confront us. How quickly we are relearning that old lesson in the wake of last week's election.

Although the editorial focuses on two overhyped examples of potential enemies surveilling a couple of our aircraft carriers (the Chinese submarine surfacing within "range of its torpedoes" near the Kitty Hawk and the Iranian drone video), it fails to mention that apparent loss of will can cause allies to decline to hitch themselves to a wagon that seems to be in retreat - the post election South Korean decline to participate in the UN authorized searching of North Korean ships, the increase in al Qaeda taunts...

Does no one in Washington remember that from bin Laden's view of history the U.S. lacks the guts to take casualties? Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, etc all seem to support his view. How much good does it do to win every major battle only to lose your nerve and concede the battlefield to you enemy? It's a big "L" on history's scorecard. Not since the Japanese fleet with its powerful battleships turned around at the Battle of Leyte Gulf has defeat been so readily grasped by a winninng side.

The IBD piece continues:

This week, not surprisingly, al-Qaida is practically giddy at the prospects of a Democratic Congress reining in President Bush.
***
On Monday, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the terrorist leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, said "The American people . . . voted for something reasonable in the last elections."
Rapprochement between the U.S. and al-Qaida? Hardly. Al-Muhajir went on to say al-Qaida would blow up "the filthiest house — which is called the White House."
By the way, al-Qaida claims to have 12,000 fighters ready for death in Iraq. Once we leave and it takes over, it won't be the end — not by a mile. As al-Qaida said Monday, next it wants to topple Lebanon's democratically elected regime.
So much for the Democrats' notion that only Afghanistan represents "the real war on terror."
So in case you're thinking maybe this new era of appeasement and walking away from our enemies will work, it pretty much looks like the answer is no.
Our enemies, real and potential, seem to think the U.S. is weaker today than it was before the election.
It will be up to us as a nation — and to our newly shifted Congress — to prove them wrong.

Time to find that spine we had after 9/11 and before the media and the "peace at any price" crowd went to work. The troops in the field have proved they have it, but the awful lesson of Vietnam seems to be playing out again. Freedom's enemies, far weaker but fighting a better media war (with help from the inside), are on the march again in real countries where real people will die because they thought that the U.S. was serious in wanting to help them live free.

And terrorism- that tactic of inferior forces- gathering momentum as the greater struggle with Islamic fascism continues.