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Give War A Chance
Last week’s anti-war protests bring back such memories.
How retro to hear more from the protestors about their fears than
their hopes. See their
opposition churning into broad and deep hate. Smell the incense of their self-righteousness.
Watch them drape themselves in every symbol they hold high or holy.
Listen to them swear fealty to the simplest of slogans.
It’s just like the bad old days of Vietnam.
The late 60s to mid 70s were the ‘weird years’ to me.
Politics were personal and vicious.
Both sides shouted across the divide of different realities. It’s shaping up as ‘déjà vu all over again’.
Especially since today’s protests inherit the same ill will. How I remember receiving those feelings of revulsion. I was in the uniform of West Point and the U.S. Army from the age of 17. I recall the nasty looks, pointing and the murmured insults from young and old in New York City and Washington, DC. I returned quiet contempt to their bile. At the time I was chagrined that no young man would insult me to my face. Now, I realize they wouldn’t confront a confident soldier for the same reason they ran from the Vietnam War. They were more afraid than they were anything else. The anti-war boys lived down to the sum of their fears. Their sanctimonious morality was convenient.
Spare me the exceptions to the rule.
The WWII liberals who opposed Vietnam and the Vietnam/Desert Storm
vets who oppose Iraq are the few, the ignoble, the flawed, or the pathetic
leftists. Check the polls.
Two-thirds of America supports war with Iraq.
Two-thirds supported fighting Communist conquest.
Even at the end of Vietnam, the middle third only turned against
the war because it wasn’t being fought to win.
The conduct of the war, not the cause, was abandoned by the
Americans who actually pay the blood tax.
The liberal third, like today, won’t serve, won’t suffer, and
privately scoff at those who do.
Conversely, I basked in the pride of my Southern kin.
Serving our country as a soldier never lost its honor to them.
It never held glory in the eyes of the many men folk who had
served. We hold war as a
necessary evil. Being willing
to fight is a necessary virtue. Our
way to give peace a chance is to win it with victory.
Most Americans share this view. Plus, my ‘people’ remember invasion, defeat, and
occupation are horrible. Winning
other wars just proves the point of the whole of war – Never Lose.
Regardless of how screwed up I thought Vietnam was, I saw the big
picture. My country was
engaged in a great global conflict against Communism.
The Cold War was WWIII. It
was a war of national survival. We
won in 1991. The remaining Communists are regional evils only.
Today, we’re in another global struggle.
WWIV, or WW-T as I prefer, is the World War against Islamist
Terrorists. At least 10% of
the Muslim world – about 150 million Islamists – declared war against
us years ago. Pearl Harbor
was 9-11.
The anti-war protestors don’t realize the vanity of their vain
protests. If they actually
could stop the war, they hasten the day of more deadly attacks here in the
USA. The weapons of mass
destruction have destinations in Israel, America and Europe.
Delivery is just a matter of time.
No delay in regime change in Iraq will stop the Islamists from
working to impose their brand of Muslim Totalitarianism on others – and
us. War or not, millions of
Muslims will harken to the barbarian chants against Infidels, until there
is a Muslim Reformation and Enlightenment.
Or, if freedom of religion is made manifest behind Iron Veil of
Muslim countries and a critical mass of people convert to Christianity of
their own free will. The
absence of war is not the presence of peace when enemies still breath. Give war a chance. Our Muslim Allies applaud our de-Hitlerizing a threatening regime.
A few reluctant European Allies wallow in their fears and it will
mean nothing - except to their shame.
We will act with our bolder Allies and win the peace.
Maintaining the peace will be challenging indeed. The different problem at home is waiting for conservative and libertarian
isolationists to wake up. The
world won’t conform to their wishes.
Our Imperial power will not corrupt nearly as much the rot from
within. Which brings us back to two generations of liberal anti-war protestors. Watch the protestors morph. Their thin veneer of civility is cracking. Yet, I won’t return hate for hate. I simply hold them in intellectual and moral contempt. Today’s appeasers, fear mongers, and fruitcakes serve the Islamists like yesterday’s handmaidens to the Communists. Anti-war protestors are the same useful fools. |
by James Atticus Bowden