"The answer lies within all of us, and we must individually and collectively commit ourselves to combat this menace".
"When it is necessary to commit troops to combat, we must do so in sufficient strength and with sufficient resolve to win," Weinberger said.
In a potentially important announcement last week, the World Bank pledged to commit "unlimited money" to combat AIDS in poor countries.
There is no graver decision for a prime minister than to commit our forces to combat – and this is the first time that I have had to do so.
Earlier governments did commit to combat operations in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and over the course of a decade a number of regular army and elite SAS troops served there.
Islamist jihad movements -- Islamic State but also the remnants of Al Qaeda and smaller networks -- may have had their day, especially as Russia and Iran commit to combat them with ground forces.
More broadly, both Harry Truman and Eisenhower strove to contain Communism without committing troops to combat, relying instead on covert operations, enhancing America's nuclear retaliatory threat and strengthening Western economies.
But it also pointedly committed them to combat international terrorism, underscoring North Korea's insistence that it is not the unpredictable rogue nation that the United States describes.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a personal set of guidelines for committing forces to combat, wrote that leaders must quickly judge when diplomacy has failed, then "act forcefully, early, during the pre-crisis period" to foil an attack on the nation.
"There are obviously further decisions to be taken before Australian forces will be committed to combat operations in Iraq," Abbott said.
