Cut and Run - 10 Sept 06

This opinion piece was sent to me by the man who had a big hand in teaching me to think for myself in areas of critical thought. He pointed me in the right direction when I was seeking answers in my life, and listened to me for hours as we sat together on the back porch watching the monsoons roll in, while I was beginning to formulate my thoughts and learning to articulate the growing ideas in my head. My dad.

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Coinciding with the anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster, some of the mainline newspapers printed opinions about the on-going conflict in Iraq. On the one hand, references were made to some politicians who were urging us to stay the course while others were demanding that we pull our troops out now. These “cut-and-runners” continue to argue that the Bush/Chaney/Powell start up of the war was said then to have been justified on the basis of false assurances about Saddam’s secret buildup of weapons of mass destruction. Now, they argue that any sensible person knows we made a mistake and can only fix it by reversing our strategy (read: by high-tailing it out of the Middle East as fast as we can). They remind us of the loss of 3,000 of our military personnel killed since the beginning of our initial attack on March 20, 2003. And lastly, they contend that not only is Iraq on the brink of civil war but that there is no realistic way we can turn things around. In other words, though not coming right out with it, the implication is clear: we lost in Vietnam and we will lose in Iraq because unlike our forbearers, we lack the foresight, courage and most importantly, the will to win.

The tragedy is that our enemies have tested and found us lacking. Moreover, the impatience we exhibit adds strength to their determination to be patient. Time is on their side and the public opinion polls in our country seem to support that view. Could it be that without firing a shot we will eventually lay down our arms because of our growing distaste for embracing what we know in our hearts to be true; simply that if we do not defend our liberty it will eventually be taken from us?

The deaths and wounding of our troops in Iraq are indeed unfortunate and not to be minimized. But we need to face up to the fact that defense of freedom is not now and never has been successfully achieved without tragic consequences when we choose not to stand up to the challenge. The question we must answer is whether we as a free people will acknowledge that our liberty is indeed at risk. Perhaps the real tragedy is that we even need to ask the question in light of the mounting and unequivocal evidence that radical Islamists want to kill off all Americans as well as the Jewish nation of Israel.

In remembering the loss of lives in Iraq, let’s try to keep things in perspective. The acts of terrorism against the World Trade Center, Pentagon and aborted effort to crash into the U.S. Capital Building snuffed out 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001. Even before that we are reminded that 62 million lives were lost during the Second World War. In the United States we witness the carnage on our roadways that take about 47,000 lives each year. In 2004, 90 people died from lightning and 19,250 from accidental poisoning. A fair question for politicians might be why we don’t seem to be as much focused on the causes of much higher numbers of lives lost every year right here at home that is the case of losses of lives in Iraq? This is not to diminish the tragedy of deaths from military violence. But it is to suggest that the tragic interruption of any life from avoidable circumstances ought to demand equal attention in our political discourse about remedies.

Adding another element to the equation we must acknowledge that in the case of accidental deaths unrelated to war, we seek to strike a balance between our distaste for government over-reaching and the corresponding encroachment on personal behavior. Our view is that there have to be limits beyond which governmental regulations dare not tread. Conversely, in the case of wars fought to preserve liberty, we need to strike the same balance but recognize the hard truth that knowingly puts life in harms way for the very reason that the forfeiture of life is sometimes a regrettable necessity to defend our way of life.

In regard to our reasons for going to Iraq, our President did not lie in giving his assessment of pre-emption. That he believed the consensus of experts on foreign intelligence, as did the leaders on both sides of the aisles in Congress, is not justification for faulting him now that we have seen the terrible consequences of war. Nor did President Bush lie in formulating his strategy on the size of the armed forces that were initially deployed to engage the enemy. Yes, he made decisions based on flawed intelligence. But so did George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in initially underestimating the strength the enemy forces they face in battle. The difference is that Washington and Lincoln were not broadly labeled as liars because their assessments turned out to be less than the absolute accuracy being demanded of President Bush. In all three cases, to demand that those three presidents never make any mistakes in judgment is to accord to them superhuman qualities more in keeping with gods of mythology.

Let us quit the pandering to political expediency. Rather, let us recognize that we are already engaged in a third world war, none like any previously fought, and none that so threatens to destroy our way of life. And let us unite in our realization that some from within want us to be defeated and they are, like the foes from without, the enemy that will eventually destroy us unless we wake up before it is too late. -Dale Head