The slow but steady comments have been on Blogs, mainline magazines, and nightly newscasts. Critics of the war are making more and more comparisons between previous U.S. conflicts and the current Iraq War, none of which are flattering. Their goal is to besmirch the current US Administration for its ineptitude, and call attention to the US’ immoral war. Their folly lies in their misuse of facts, and misunderstanding of the nature of this conflict. And the timidity of the world is blame for any extended duration of this conflict.

On October 26, Terrence Hunt of the AP remarked how the U.S. involvement in Iraq will soon have lasted longer than our involvement in World War II. Ari Berman of The Nation made the same claim more than a month ago. And Rupert Cornwell of The Independent stated way back in August that “America’s (and Britain’s) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War.” Each author uses the most convenient date for ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of US involvement in World War II to make their point, but the actual length is not important for them. Many others have also chimed in, all painting a picture of overwhelming despair because of the suffering of this conflict.

The forgotten facts are too numerous to recount, but humor me with just a few. First, World War II really began in the early 1930s when the Japanese invaded Northern China, and started their Pacific expansion which eventually led to the conquest of the entire Pacific Rim. Our entry into the conflict did not begin until 1941 only because of our blindness to the growing aggression of the Japanese, and we (and the rest of the Far East) paid a dear price for our unwillingness to stand up to the growing bully. Second, official conflict on the European front started on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. This was not the real start of hostilities (ask the Czechs or the Jews), but Europe was ‘officially’ at war by the fall of 1939. And yes, you critics out there are correct in deducing that America did not enter the European fight for more than two years, but ask Poland, Belgium, France, Holland, Britain, parts of Africa, Middle East, and the Soviet Union if the world was at war, and they will mock your isolationist ignorance. Lastly, the major hostilities of World War II ended with the treaties signed on VE and VJ days, but the conflicts were far from over. German guerrilla groups continued to kill Americans, and any Germans that cooperated with the Allied invaders. All of Europe took billions in US capital via the military, the Marshall Plan and US charitable organizations to get it back on its feet after more than a decade of Hitler’s evil and the rest of Europe’s denial and then retribution.

The personnel and body count differences between the two conflicts make any comparison of suffering seem silly. Low estimates of World War II deaths are as high as 50 million, with higher reports climbing to nearly 100 million. American deaths were a mere 418,000 citizens, while Poland lost 16 percent of its population. Compared to that kind of suffering, the current Iraqi conflict is painful, but not even on the same level as World War II.

Militarily, The United States landed over 156,000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 and suffered over 10,000 casualties in those first few days. While our casualty count in Iraq is now higher than the D-Day invasion, the extreme nature of the suffering in such a short amount of time overwhelms any comparison with today’s conflict. Our highest troop levels in Iraq have hovered right around the total D-Day veterans’ total (with our country’s population roughly twice the WW II size), making the current conflict significantly less of a strain on the US and its resources than World War II.

Various pundits have used other conflicts for comparisons with Iraqi Freedom (Vietnam), but World War II is the best comparison to make my point—Iraqi Freedom, however devastating it is, is no where near the tragedy and personal loss experienced during World War II. This war could drag on another 10 years (heaven forbid), and the pain would still not equal the 10 million US servicemen drafted during WW II, the MILLIONS killed, the TRILLIONS spent, and the overall lives ruined by WW II. War is never a joyous moment. In armed conflict, nobody really wins. But sometimes that suffering is required to prevent future, greater suffering at the hands of emboldened, ruthless thugs who have no timeline, and who think as little about 3,000 lives as they do about 100 million.

The timidity for real conflict in today’s discourse is the root cause for the extended duration of the current conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, and indeed the rest of the world. We fight a ruthless, barbaric enemy who values his lust for power more than he values his own sons, and yet we refuse to call him an enemy, refuse to crush him, and assume that he can be reasoned with. Our current enemy respects brute force, and continues to sacrifice its own children in the murder of soldiers, women and children. Until we respect him as an enemy and not as a neighbor, we will never see peace.

Comparisons help us develop yardsticks for how we are doing. But poor comparisons to prove an otherwise poor point only muddy the waters, and trivialize the suffering of both current and previous conflicts. One comparison with World War II is critical, however. The West’s unwillingness to tackle the problem of Islamic-Fascism head on ensures that we will some day reap results similar to the suffering of the World War II generation. That is one comparison I hope we can avoid.

I hate the New York Yankees. Each and every year, they find a way into the playoffs. Similarly, each time they play my Orioles, it seems they find a way to adjust, shift players, and steal many games from Baltimore that in the fifth inning appeared to be hopeless for the Bronx Bombers. They shift tactics, personnel, and plans, but their goal is always the same—winning.

Baseball is the sport of pure capitalists. No salary caps, wild trades for September pushes into the playoffs, and no time limit to the games. Indeed, I shudder to think of the games that Baltimore’s middle relievers have blown after building a comfortable lead. You see, baseball is not about home runs, strikeouts, or walks. It’s about twenty-seven outs, period. Many games have been lost after successfully leading through 26 brilliant outs, only to let one pitch get up in the strike zone. Each inning pits hitters against pitchers and fielders in small athletic face-offs, but each inning only matters as it is combined with the other eight. The final score when the last out is made is the only thing that counts.

Like baseball, war is the aggregate of multiple battles, with the only statistic that really matters being the final outcome. Sure, tragedies of each encounter will leave their mark. And winning ugly is never the goal. But the main goal—the only goal that matters—is winning.

So back to baseball. How many games would the Yankees have won this past year if, after their starting pitcher got crushed in the first few innings, they had forfeited the game to save their resources for the next night? Likewise, how many years have we seen the BoSox with a comfortable lead in August, only to see it vanish at the hands of those darn pinstripes?

George Steinbrenner doesn’t make his late-season trades on the basis of how the other owners will view him. He spends his money and makes his adjustments to WIN. And win he does. For all his lack of grace, Steinbrenner and the Yankees expect to win, and don’t settle for anything else. Sure, other teams often challenge them and even take the pennant from them, but that does not change the focus of the Yankees’ organization. They salute their opponents, and put them on notice that they’ll be back next time. For the Yankees, winning means the game, the pennant, and a year-in and year-out tradition. In foreign policy and especially where war is involved, the focus must be victory and success. This brings me to my next point.

Was the contest worth it? Since the Baltimore Orioles were picked to finish fourth in their division AGAIN, why did they even try? Is it worth the effort if you know that your talent and cash reserves just don’t stack up against the Red Sox, Yankees and Blue Jays? Of course it is! And despite having outspent the rest of the league, the Yankees failed to make the World Series this year. They were bested by a no-name team from the Motor City who focused on twenty-seven outs for seven games better than they did. Detroit—despite the pre-season predictions of failure and the nay saying experts—demonstrated what it means to stay in the game, and focus on the end goal. Will they win next year? Maybe not, but you won’t see them rolling up their flag because of the renewed predictions of failure. And speaking of ‘worth it,’ many will tell you that baseball is still a poor sport, not worth the time we Americans expend on it. They are entitled to their opinion, however wrong it may be.

Many questioned the Iraq war from the beginning, and they are also entitled to their miss-guided opinion. The nay sayers predicted (and continue to predict) failure, and see no link between this war and the greater struggle for civilization. This is perhaps the only legitimate point of debate, but these critics are still wrong. Years of paying for suicide bombers, raping his own country, ignoring UN sanctions, seeking WMD (and achieving them, but that is another topic), vocally supporting terrorists, and attacking American Forces enforcing a UN weapons-free zone sealed Saddam Hussein’s necessary fate long before the “Neo-Con conspiracy” came to power here in the U.S. Could we have handled him a different way? Maybe. Did we try many other ways to contain, punish and/or change Mr. Hussein? Yes (don’t make me go through the ways employed during Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43’s tenures), but none of them worked, and this Administration felt that the only viable option was military force and regime removal. The goal of winning and a successful Middle East program never changed, the tools just changed. When your pitching staff lets you down, you have to let your heavy hitters swing away to push the balance in your favor.

And for all you fair weather fans out there who leave during the seventh-inning stretch when your team is down, your excuse that it’s late and you have to get up early for work tomorrow is just as shameful as those early flag-wavers who loved the quick march to Baghdad, but have become disenchanted with the hard task of holding onto the lead until that twenty-seventh out is made.

War is not baseball. It is not a game where the losers go home, clean off the uniform and try it again next time. War is for real, meant to only be used when you intend to win. That does not mean that the contests will be easy, that the enemy will always quit when we get ahead, or that the challenge of the conflict means that it wasn’t worth it. But walking off the field before the war is complete guarantees that it won’t we worth it, and ensures that your enemy will know where to go when he wants an easy victory.

Stay the course does not mean to blindly push on when things are not going well. Stay the course means to take the lead of the Yankees, and never accept anything but victory, doing whatever it takes to win. And step One is to finish the game.