Living with Warriors
Posted by: Scott W. Graves | 02/07/2008 6:36 PM
I live with warriors. Veterans of foreign conflicts fill my life with joy every day. My husband served during the Vietnam Era and came home to a disdainful nation. His father is a Korean War veteran who was awarded two Bronze Stars. My father is a former Marine who served between those two conflicts. My uncle retired as a Master Chief in the Navy and lost his final battle to the ravages of Agent Orange. My brother-in-law and cousin served in Desert Storm. A nephew recently returned from Iraq. My 15-year-old son has made it perfectly clear that I should be ready for him to enlist. One day I hope to be the proud parent of a U.S. Serviceman.
I live with the scars that the warriors have brought home. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder lives in my house. I learned long ago not to startle Joe when I wake him in the morning. I've seen him break into a cold sweat when the TV sound effect of a land mine arming clicked while he was quietly working on a crossword puzzle. I've watched his memory turn back to thirty-year-old events with the whiff of an obscure scent. I have knowledge of what the long term costs of this war might be.
I will never understand mankind's unique ability to bloody a battlefield. But I do understand that we need the warriors in our society. I applaud the training, bravery, and sacrifice that distinguishes the U.S. Armed Forces. There is not one member of our modern military that was conscripted to serve. Every last member is a volunteer who has been informed, trained, and compensated for their service. Many joined the ranks in the aftermath of September 11 and during our current conflict's recruiting needs. Each and every member of today's citizen army knew what they were getting into and the risks involved--even the risk of death and permanent injury.
The great debate on whether or not our nation can afford the cost of on ongoing war is being waged in congress and the press with little consideration for one simple truth--this is not like any other war we have ever waged.
Measuring the modern Middle Eastern conflicts against the geo-political wars in American history will doom us to a multigenerational conflict that could last for centuries. An appropriate reference for today's Iraq and the Middle East conflicts is England's invasion of Ireland in 1171. The peace accord between England and Ireland was signed in 1998--a staggering 827 years of sectarian violence, subjugation, terror based on tribal and religious grounds. There is nothing in the Western Hemisphere that has imprinted the American culture to comprehend decades and centuries of conflict in our homeland. In fact, as a distinct culture, Americans have been almost untouched by battles on our home shores.
The seeds of Islamic extremists religious and ethnic wars were planted in biblical times and have bubbled, brewed, and boiled over longer than history has had the ability to adequately record and report. Judaism, Christianity and Islam were hewn from the Book of Genesis when Sarah insisted that her husband Abraham cast his female slave Hager and their son Ishmael from the family home.
This is a post 9/11 world. This is a world where the mainstream media fears that showing images of the attacks on the U.S.A. by a group of religious zealots will scar the American psyche.
Will America cease to be the America we accept--the land that embraces the slippery slope of moral decay, gratuitous sex, conspicuous consumption, sex sells, drugged youth, unwed motherhood, and broken families if we really understood how the religious zealots in the cradle of civilization view American secular culture? If we look at America through Islam's looking glass what would we see? The world media's portrayal of American culture is pretty damning. From a zealot's point-of-view our "freedoms" don't make us free. We are simply enslaved by our base desires and crass consumerism at the expense of the rest of the world. Islam's teachings would free us from our secular slavery.
In the name of political correctness, the better part of the last five years has been devoted to asking America to forget that nearly 3,000 citizens of the world were blown up by suicide bombers disguised as foreign exchange students living freely in our communities.
International terrorism experts believe that it is not a matter of if America is attacked again--it is a matter of when.
I'm a NIMBY when it comes to war. I want the frontlines of the war on terror to be overseas, not in my community. Attack embassies in Africa, a warship in Yemen, a barracks in Beirut, a Mediterranean cruise ship, a nightclub in Bali--But Not In My Back Yard--not my favorite shopping mall, sports complex or school.
We are not fighting our forefathers' wars. In 225 years of American history we have fought geo-political wars. This war is based on the dominance of theology and the establishment of theocracies similar to the governance of Iran where Mullahs rule the country under the guise of free elections. While the communists ruled the Soviet bloc they professed that their elections were free, when, in fact, vocal and powerful minorities stifled the majority rule by controlling the message delivered through the media, limiting choices to those individuals and groups approved by the powerful minority, and forcing the electorate to ratify limited options. Public discourse was silenced and punished. If you were a member of an ethnic or religious minority out of favor with the established leaders, your options for living a peaceful life were slowly and systematically reduced to a level of simple subsistence. Hey, this all sound like Iraq under the despot that was Saddam Hussein.
Weapons of mass distraction--that's right distraction, not destruction--were Saddam's tools before, during and after the first gulf war. The mainstream media's liberal flock seems to forget that Saddam's Iraq: invaded neighboring Kuwait without provocation, spent ten years avoiding the United Nations' compliance inspectors charged with insuring Iraq wasn't developing WMD's, killed hundreds of thousands of countrymen who didn't share his ethno-political-religious-tribal affiliation, and used the oil for food program to enrich Saddam and a few select friends and family while his country was suffering.
Saddam was an evil man. America needs warriors to fight evil men. America must embrace, support, train, compensate, and deploy our warriors to fight evil where it lives. Today that battle is Iraq.
The Democrat controlled Congress wants us to lay down our arms and give the enemy a timetable for withdrawal. Their reasoning goes something like this--there were mistakes in the intelligence leading to the war--we are mired in an Iraq civil war--there have been civilian casualties--the war is unpopular--the peace is unattainable--the headlines are atrocious--the public wants change--this is taking too long.
To congress and the pacifists they try to placate I have a message--war is messy, costly, vicious, and unpredictable. Intelligence is frequently wrong. Mistakes will be made. Lives will be lost. Congress knew this when they voted to authorize the war.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle," are words written by the English Statesman Sir Edmund Burke. Good people cannot continue to rationalize bad or evil behavior on the part of terrorist and terrorist nations and expect to win this war and any future conflicts. It is a fact that good people of Iraq will ultimately be responsible for winning or loosing the conflict in their homeland. It is the U.S.'s responsibility to help this process by providing the tools to stabilize Iraq.
And by stabilizing Iraq, our nation of infidels may buy some time in a conflict that dates to the Book of Genesis. We live in a country where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and a host of other creeds are practiced peacefully. America is unique in ways that should be celebrated and protected.
Millenniums of conflict trace to Abraham and his family's dirty little secret. Does our Congress think they will solve this problem by bringing home our troops?
Unleash the warriors.
I live with the scars that the warriors have brought home. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder lives in my house. I learned long ago not to startle Joe when I wake him in the morning. I've seen him break into a cold sweat when the TV sound effect of a land mine arming clicked while he was quietly working on a crossword puzzle. I've watched his memory turn back to thirty-year-old events with the whiff of an obscure scent. I have knowledge of what the long term costs of this war might be.
I will never understand mankind's unique ability to bloody a battlefield. But I do understand that we need the warriors in our society. I applaud the training, bravery, and sacrifice that distinguishes the U.S. Armed Forces. There is not one member of our modern military that was conscripted to serve. Every last member is a volunteer who has been informed, trained, and compensated for their service. Many joined the ranks in the aftermath of September 11 and during our current conflict's recruiting needs. Each and every member of today's citizen army knew what they were getting into and the risks involved--even the risk of death and permanent injury.
The great debate on whether or not our nation can afford the cost of on ongoing war is being waged in congress and the press with little consideration for one simple truth--this is not like any other war we have ever waged.
Measuring the modern Middle Eastern conflicts against the geo-political wars in American history will doom us to a multigenerational conflict that could last for centuries. An appropriate reference for today's Iraq and the Middle East conflicts is England's invasion of Ireland in 1171. The peace accord between England and Ireland was signed in 1998--a staggering 827 years of sectarian violence, subjugation, terror based on tribal and religious grounds. There is nothing in the Western Hemisphere that has imprinted the American culture to comprehend decades and centuries of conflict in our homeland. In fact, as a distinct culture, Americans have been almost untouched by battles on our home shores.
The seeds of Islamic extremists religious and ethnic wars were planted in biblical times and have bubbled, brewed, and boiled over longer than history has had the ability to adequately record and report. Judaism, Christianity and Islam were hewn from the Book of Genesis when Sarah insisted that her husband Abraham cast his female slave Hager and their son Ishmael from the family home.
This is a post 9/11 world. This is a world where the mainstream media fears that showing images of the attacks on the U.S.A. by a group of religious zealots will scar the American psyche.
Will America cease to be the America we accept--the land that embraces the slippery slope of moral decay, gratuitous sex, conspicuous consumption, sex sells, drugged youth, unwed motherhood, and broken families if we really understood how the religious zealots in the cradle of civilization view American secular culture? If we look at America through Islam's looking glass what would we see? The world media's portrayal of American culture is pretty damning. From a zealot's point-of-view our "freedoms" don't make us free. We are simply enslaved by our base desires and crass consumerism at the expense of the rest of the world. Islam's teachings would free us from our secular slavery.
In the name of political correctness, the better part of the last five years has been devoted to asking America to forget that nearly 3,000 citizens of the world were blown up by suicide bombers disguised as foreign exchange students living freely in our communities.
International terrorism experts believe that it is not a matter of if America is attacked again--it is a matter of when.
I'm a NIMBY when it comes to war. I want the frontlines of the war on terror to be overseas, not in my community. Attack embassies in Africa, a warship in Yemen, a barracks in Beirut, a Mediterranean cruise ship, a nightclub in Bali--But Not In My Back Yard--not my favorite shopping mall, sports complex or school.
We are not fighting our forefathers' wars. In 225 years of American history we have fought geo-political wars. This war is based on the dominance of theology and the establishment of theocracies similar to the governance of Iran where Mullahs rule the country under the guise of free elections. While the communists ruled the Soviet bloc they professed that their elections were free, when, in fact, vocal and powerful minorities stifled the majority rule by controlling the message delivered through the media, limiting choices to those individuals and groups approved by the powerful minority, and forcing the electorate to ratify limited options. Public discourse was silenced and punished. If you were a member of an ethnic or religious minority out of favor with the established leaders, your options for living a peaceful life were slowly and systematically reduced to a level of simple subsistence. Hey, this all sound like Iraq under the despot that was Saddam Hussein.
Weapons of mass distraction--that's right distraction, not destruction--were Saddam's tools before, during and after the first gulf war. The mainstream media's liberal flock seems to forget that Saddam's Iraq: invaded neighboring Kuwait without provocation, spent ten years avoiding the United Nations' compliance inspectors charged with insuring Iraq wasn't developing WMD's, killed hundreds of thousands of countrymen who didn't share his ethno-political-religious-tribal affiliation, and used the oil for food program to enrich Saddam and a few select friends and family while his country was suffering.
Saddam was an evil man. America needs warriors to fight evil men. America must embrace, support, train, compensate, and deploy our warriors to fight evil where it lives. Today that battle is Iraq.
The Democrat controlled Congress wants us to lay down our arms and give the enemy a timetable for withdrawal. Their reasoning goes something like this--there were mistakes in the intelligence leading to the war--we are mired in an Iraq civil war--there have been civilian casualties--the war is unpopular--the peace is unattainable--the headlines are atrocious--the public wants change--this is taking too long.
To congress and the pacifists they try to placate I have a message--war is messy, costly, vicious, and unpredictable. Intelligence is frequently wrong. Mistakes will be made. Lives will be lost. Congress knew this when they voted to authorize the war.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle," are words written by the English Statesman Sir Edmund Burke. Good people cannot continue to rationalize bad or evil behavior on the part of terrorist and terrorist nations and expect to win this war and any future conflicts. It is a fact that good people of Iraq will ultimately be responsible for winning or loosing the conflict in their homeland. It is the U.S.'s responsibility to help this process by providing the tools to stabilize Iraq.
And by stabilizing Iraq, our nation of infidels may buy some time in a conflict that dates to the Book of Genesis. We live in a country where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and a host of other creeds are practiced peacefully. America is unique in ways that should be celebrated and protected.
Millenniums of conflict trace to Abraham and his family's dirty little secret. Does our Congress think they will solve this problem by bringing home our troops?
Unleash the warriors.
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