Memorial Day Questions
We received this letter from an anonymous person who raises some serious questions that we should ask ourselves on this Memorial Day and every day as well:
Can we honor our heroes who’ve fallen in distant lands and still question the politicians who put them there? Should failed foreign policies be allowed to hide behind patriotism?
The Greatest Generation needed Pearl Harbor before fighting World War II. Would many of them have bought the rationale for invading Iraq?
How can those who don’t trust the federal government to run health care still trust it to run Iraq and Afghanistan? How can those so critical of Obama’s domestic power grab not criticize his sending 30,000 more troops to prop up Karzai?
How did the Neo-Cons (McCain, Cheney, Palin, Krauthammer, Wolfowitz, Perl, etc.) hijack conservatism for a vast expansion of deficit spending on ill-conceived foreign wars?
Can Ron and Rand Paul remind their Tea Party followers that open-ended foreign military commitments were never envisioned or sanctioned by our constitutional framers?
The British numbered their Afghanistan fiascoes: First, Second and Third Afghan Wars. They all ended the same. They never tried a Fourth. Can we learn from them?
When will any of the anti-deficit Republicans running to face Boxer question the $900 billion in deficit spending so far in Iraq and Afghanistan?
As John Quincy Adams said, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. We are the supporters of freedom for all but the defenders only of our own”. Should these words still apply? Are their prudent limits on what, where and how we should use military strength?
If our purpose is to extend freedom, why has our Iraqi regime forced half the Christians to flee and our Afghan clients suppress religious freedom entirely?
In honoring all those who fought in our wars, can we also question the limits of military force in achieving political ends? Can we remember that no soldier or general ever got us into war, but civilian authorities–here and abroad? The biggest tribute we can give all who served is to use their lives wisely and only when a clear goal can be achieved.
Food for thought…
The question should be, what is the real purpose of our invasions of other countries? Should we honor the dead who have fallen in the service of a dying oil economy? One is tempted to consider them deluded into thinking thathheu are actually fighting to protect Americans at home, but soldiers have the same responsibility as the rest of us. They need to make sure that our government is not spending it’s resources in ways contrary to the ideals of justice and freedom. If we think their mission in our current wars, both open and secret, is justified, then their sacrifice should be honored. If we believe their mission to be misguided at best, or amorally imperialistic at worst, then we need to implore them to lay down their arms and stop killing in the name of the United States of America.
Our military is all volunteer (it really always has been – you could walk across to Canada or flush yourself down into Mexico anytime).
I view our War on Terrorism in Iraq as our finest hour (humanitarian) and yet also 100% focused on our long term national defense self interest.
The Muslim Terrorist “religion of peace” has driven Christian people (and all other non-Muslims) out of their homes, or killed them by Theocratic mandate, for centuries.
Unless a (secular) minority rights respecting civil government society can be established and endure within Muslim-majority nations (Iraq being our social-science experiment to that end) then the non-Muslim nations on earth must endure a flood of immigrants (which always includes many who are poisoned with the Totalitarian murderous slavemaster ethic which is the core of that demonic “religion”) to aggitate and undermine them.
There is no road to Heaven or eternal salvation for a Muslim other than by means of KILLING a non-Muslim; that is what they “teach” along with (female) slavery.
America is not involved in “conquest” of nations, nor in “killing in the name of the USA” (as Ling Cod comments).
Our military forces are the entirely appropriate governmental agent of our self defense. An approaching enemy, sending advance agents (i.e. to bomb our World Trade Center, etc.) needs to be stopped if we mean to defend ourselves and survive.
Our cultural ethic and rational military analysis argues for letting the Muslim people work out and resolve their own means (civil laws) of accepting and accomodating minorities within their own midst. A nation-building police action, such as was conducted in Iraq (as oppossed to an actual War which would have lasted about fifteen minutes of nuclear bombing), is/was the HIGH cost in American military lives way of turning the governmental leadership of Muslim humanity away from global jihad and toward respect for the dignity, independence and sanctity of innocent individual human lives.
Communism is the basic underlying engine for Totalitarian tyrannical enslavement of all humanity, but terrorist Islam is its most effective agent in that battle against the free nations of this world, which America has led for all of our lifetimes (until the election of the Obama-Communists by the brainless ANTI-MAN, anti-family Feminists who view big government as the best husband they can find).
Rain–are you being serious? Or is are you parodying long discredited NeoCon dreams?
Our troops are capable of imposing “civil government society” within Muslim nations? Huh?
The Iraqi Christian minority has fared fare worse under Shi’ite majority rule now than it did under Hussein.
Just where do we invade next? Iran? Saudi Arabia (the true home of Al Qaeda). Your’s is a formula for permanent war and bankruptcy.
Among the various civil-humanitarian works being done by our military forces in Iraq is the development or establishment of civil law courts which rely upon their own legal precedent-judgements to guide and reach verdicts.
The “courts” of Iraq were entirely Totalitarian FIAT slaughterhouses or torture chambers. They had no jurisprudence, instead merely records of their “court ordered” murders.
I’m certainly not “neo” anything. My thoughts offered here on this topic relate simply to the thousands of years Judeo-Christian understanding of humanity which provides the foundation for our own free civil society.
It didn’t take our military forces a half dozen years in Iraq in order for “Dick Cheny to steal their oil” or similar “wisdom” from the Communist media.
There is very little within the Muslim “religion” to be valued or preserved, unless one is a tyrant (as in Leftist-Communist-Totalitarian). Consequently, a civil – secular minority rights respecting-protecting Rule of Law government (i.e. based on laws which are enacted by democratically elected representatives of all citizens, both men and women – remember the blue ink-stained fingers which Sadaam’s boys didn’t get to cut off?), is the way that America should help the freely elected government leaders of Iraq to envision their future. That is traditional freedom-loving America, rather than Obama-Communist, Communist-controlled “main stream media” Feminist-Abortionist-Euro-America.
I’m not surprised that you can identify and recall some of the no doubt many benefits for “Christian minority” in Iraq under Sadaam. You and your ilk no doubt vote for and support such benefits under Obama-Communist-Totalitarian government here.
Rain,
All I can say is wow, if this what you really believe. Seven years after “mission accomplished”, thousands of American deaths, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, over one trillion dollars in cost, and you call this “our finest hour.” You call our action an “entirely appropriate governmental agent of our self defense.” Really? Some guy sitting in a hole in the Nevada desert flying unmaned drones into groups of woman and children are an appropriate response?
“Communism is the basic underlying engine for Totalitarian tyrannical enslavement of all humanity, but terrorist Islam is its most effective agent in that battle against the free nations of this world, which America has led for all of our lifetimes (until the election of the Obama-Communists by the brainless ANTI-MAN, anti-family Feminists who view big government as the best husband they can find).”
This country has been at war my whole life. Frankly I am sick of being at war. Obviously it is not working because things are not getting better. If war ever worked to solve any problem, then we would not have to keep having them. Terror only works because uneducated people continue to promote uneducated ideas weather here in this country or any country. When people’s political voice is cut off their only option is to resort to terror to regain that voice (.ie the founding of our country was a terrorist act.) You spout off quite a bit about Saddam. You ought to consider who put him there, who supported him there, and who gave him the weapons to do what he did. You really should consider how that country was created in the first place if you really want an understanding of what’s happening today. You also should stop confusing what happened on 9/11 with Saddam since neither one has anything to do with the other. You should also stop confusing Muslim extremists as representing the whole of their religion as I’m sure you would say that Christian doctors who go into churches and gun people down during mass do not represent all of Christianity. And frankly you should look forward to the day when we can truly honor our veterans, dead and alive with our country not being at war. That would be an accomplishment any war veteran would be proud of. I know I look forward to that day.
The military cannot establish civil law. Only civilians can.
In the end, those civilians will be Iraqis, Iraqis part of a pro-Iranian Shi’ite theocratic regime we brought to power.
Thousands of lives, billions of dollars. Mission Accomplished!