"...War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. " John Stuart Mill
Our Nation, or rather Our Military, has been at war for nearly a decade. In reality, we have been fighting for nearly a decade, though we have been at war for far longer. For decades, we ignored the attacks of the enemy, we ignored the declarations of war of the enemy. They were far off and easily forgotten, by all but the families of the affected. We ignored the senseless murder of far off civilians oppressed by the same enemy.
Those that desire to oppress, to expand their own power and ideology, are not of the same mind, but often their greed brings them to ally themselves of fellow oppressors, even of diabolically opposing ideologies. The ideologies of similarity often finds itself in opposition to would be allies, as did the national Socialism of the Nazi Empire to the Communistic Socialism of the Soviet Empire. Democratically elected politicians find value in distorting the realities of "allies" and "enemies" to rally the people to a cause or away from an action.
"When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration." John Stuart Mill
Consider the news of Afghanistan this weekend, which repeatedly talks about the "9 Civilians Killed" by NATO aircraft, while continuing to ignore that those civilians were surrounded by Taliban thugs shooting at US Marines. The Taliban had ignored the Geneva Conventions and Laws of Land Warfare by forcibly taking refuge in the civilian's property, by failing to safeguard those same civilians from harm, and by preventing those civilians from seeking safety away from the battle. But these details are not provided by the media. These details are purposefully ignored.
Receiving less press and some degree of distortion is the attack by Islamist Terrorists in Herat that killed 4 Afghan Muslim civilians. "A blast killed 4" rather than "Islamist Terrorists Murdered 4." The media disengages the enemy from their murderous actions against civilians while ignoring that US Marines were fighting the enemy that held hostage civilians, unbeknownst to the Marines in contact. Even the "Voice of America" engages in the distortion.
"A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill
One comment I noted recently stated "Saddam is dead. OBL is dead. Can we bring the Troops home now?" I've long contended that the most important responsibility of the President in wartime is to explain to the American People, why war is necessary. George W Bush failed at it and the current Administration won't even call it a war.
The War in Afghanistan is not won. Al-Qaeda continues to exist, to recruit, to attack, and to hold territory in Yemen, in Saudi Arabia, and in Pakistan. The Taliban is not defeated. Yes, the influx of Troops into Afghanistan has helped to turn the tide, but there still exists large swathes of active battleground, and strongholds of the enemy. The Taliban continues to murder unarmed civilians, to burn down schools, to blow up Afghans traveling down Afghan roads.
To prematurely withdraw, would allow them to take back hard fought ground, if not the nation. The "surge" was not sufficiently manned to eradicate the enemy from the entire country, but only to pick and choose the battles of operationally greatest importance, before going to the next.
Should the Taliban return to power, their murderous tyranny would be replicated. Conditions would return to those of pre-9/11, and for what would the last 10 years be? The difference would only be that we know that enemy better and that enemy would be more open of their animosity towards us. They would have greater resources and infrastructure, provided by us to the democracy of Afghanistan.
Never in our history have we faced a more atrocious enemy. We have faced atrocious enemies and we've faced more capable enemies, but the atrociousness of the Nazis did not extend to the common Soldier. The average grunt in the German Army of WWII was simply fighting for his country, not for the extermination of a race of people. The hardcore atrocities and those that supported them were concentrated in parts of the SS, the SA, and the Nazi political machine.
Islamist terrorism is concentrated atrocity. It is analagous to the SS, SA, and Nazi core. It seeks a national base to gain those non-ideological foot soldiers. It has such a country in Iran, is closer than ever to gaining one in Yemen, is gaining ground in Pakistan, and lost one in Afghanistan which remains a battleground. It has been beaten back but not defeated in Iraq, as well as other parts of the Islamic world.
In few places of the Middle East is the uneasy alliance of tyrants of opposing ideologies more apparent than in Syria. The secular Ba'athist regime has long supported Iranian Islamist terrorists of Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and more recently allowed Al-Qaeda safe passage into Iraq. Yet, the Ba'athist regime has a history of literally wiping ancient towns off the map to rid itself of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and is currently slaughtering civilians in the streets, whether Islamist or proponents of democracy. In fact the wane of protests is due in greater part to the realization of those seeking freedom that the protests were being led by the Muslim Brotherhood, than to the wholesale slaughter by the Ba'athist government.
The current US Administration says little and does less about the situation in Syria. It made the decision to ignore the long known fact that Syria is a state sponsor of terrorism and reward it with renewed diplomatic ties.
And while the support of rebels against the secular tyranny of Qaddafi is defensible and even a right thing to do, the administration pretends that attacking military elements far from the battlefield is a humanitarian action to protect civilians. It must be confusing for the political adherents of the Administration to see Libyan rebels portrayed as "civilians" to be protected while the Administration claims that it need only answer to the UN, whose mandate does not afford for taking sides, other than to protect civilians, but not to answer to the Constitutionally mandated Congress.
One must find it troubling that dropping bombs on the cars of Libya is justifiably humanitarian, but the dropping of bombs on Taliban fighting from a hostage laden compound is not.
Let's call Libya what it is: a civil war of which we have taken sides. The sooner that we admit the reality instead of pretending it is something it is not, the sooner we can openly do what is necessary to end the violence. Qaddaffi is a tyrant, and appears to be increasingly loony. If you're going to tell the dictator that he must leave, back it up by admitting that your actions are supporting the rebel force to overthrow him.
"As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other...."~John Stuart Mill, The Contest in America, vol. 1, p.26 (1868).
The current bedrock of Freedom was established in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence, which began a civil war against one of the most free nations on earth at the time. A Continent of Freedom, mired only in a pocket of tyranny to the south grew from it, to most of the Hemisphere. In the wake of World War I, Freedom grew even as a new tyranny in Communism was given birth. National Socialism was born out of the Worldwide Depression of the 1930's and had to be fought in alliance with the enemy of Freedom, the military might of the future Soviet Empire.
And in the post WWII era, we saw Freedom shrink globally, until the people themselves stood on the line, ready to die, unarmed, on the streets of Poland, the squares of Czechoslovakia & Moscow, and on the very symbol of Communist Oppression itself, the Berlin Wall. The financially and morally broke Soviet Overlords finally capitulated to the relief of the world and surprise of American Politicians.
Most of the world believed we had entered a new era of peace. Politicians proclaimed they would cash in the "peace dividend" by slashing the militaries of democracies, even as the first war of the post-Soviet era was launched against a brutal tyrant who coveted his neighbor's riches, and needed to erase his debt to the tiny kngdom of Kuwait.
On the heels of the greatest peacetime cuts to the US Military in history, from 18 Army Divisions to 10, the US President sent Troops to Bosnia & Kosovo, where they remain through today, in what was supposed to be stamping out the last embers of war. And the Serbian leader surprised the world by capitulating to an air war alone and giving up the secessionist Kosovo.
Though a tyrant, Milosevic loved his homeland and logic dictated it was more important than the lands he would oppress. His goals of oppression were small compared to those of today's enemies. He only wanted to keep as much of Yugoslavia as he could, not to carve out an Empire of Tyranny across a third of the world. It would be 10 years before Kosovo was declared to be a non-combat zone, by the UN. No one knows how long it will be before US Troops are pulled from Kosovo, but it was an early war involving our current Islamist enemy, who ceded the battlefield to the West, only because they were too inept to achieve their goals, in a land that rejected their ideologies.
What American Politicians cashed in was not just the "Peace Dividend" but the very stock that paid the dividend: the US Military advantage, along with the NATO Military alliance/advantage.
Strategic victories in Somalia, in the Sudan, in Beirut, and in Palestine emboldened the current enemy. A lack of meaningful response in the wake of the Embassy Bombings of Kenya & Tanzania, of Al-Khobar Towers, of the WTC in 1993, and the USS Cole led the enemy to believe it could operate with impunity, trading a few mud huts in 3rd World strongholds of Sudan and Afghanistan, for multi-million dollar missiles and targets of importance in the Western World.
Pockets of the old enemy remained in North Korea, Cuba, and decreasingly perceived as such, China. It was believed they too would eventually fall, with their aging leaders. China put on an air of capitalism and learned it could profit quite well, without the chains of freedom and democracy allowing the voice of dissent. The new enemy offered the old a lesson in the new style of tyranny (Ayatollah Khomeni to the USSR as it fell apart), but few could ignore the ideological opposites of Islamism and Communist Atheism based tyrannies. Few thought the two could ally themselves.
Today's world is far more dangerous, far more oppressive than it was in 1992. The politicians have squandered the peace offered them in 1991 and the tide of tyranny has risen. The future of the Middle East is far from certain, even in the nations of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, where Islamism competes, "democratically," at the moment with Freedom to the applause of American politicians. Freedom is on the decline in what was once the most stable of secular democracies in the region, Turkey, as islamism gains a foothold. Iran continues to foment islamism in Bahrain and Yemen, supporting both the Shi'a in the former, and the Sunni Al-Qaeda in the latter.
But rather than advising and assisting the leader of Yemen and Bahrain on increasing Freedom and Democracy to combat the islamism, the same leaders that have demonstrated an alliance against islamist terrorists for years, the US Administration has ordered allied leaders to abdicate to the enemy and ignored the atrocities of enemies in Iran and Syria.
While noting the fatigue of an undermanned Military, the US Administration has implemented cuts in the authorized Troop Strength of the Force by 49,000, while ordering it to make extra time it does not have for powerpoint presentations and politically correct programs of "diversity." While opening up a 3rd "Contingency Operation," i.e. war, the US Administration is cutting the Military Budget by $100 Billion, which must be the largest cut during wartime ever suggested.
"...War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. " John Stuart Mill
"As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other...."~John Stuart Mill, The Contest in America, vol. 1, p.26 (1868).
"A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill
I would argue that even uglier than those unwilling to risk life and limb for Freedom from Oppression, are those that would use their political might to prevent the willing from protecting the weak, for the sake of their own guilty conscience that they are too selfish to engage the oppressor themselves.
I would argue that those that use their soapbox to sloganize against the suppression of tyrants is as guilty as the oppressors of their crimes. I would argue that the greedy who prefer to buy votes with cell phones and earmarks for turtle tunnels than paying the Warrior who is taking out terrorists is a truly despicable creature.
But I distinguish between those on high that propagandize and sloganeer their calls to tax the worker to pay the political machines and those that fall for the slogans of "free" and "peace." The latter has been kept in the dark on the realities of the world, of the true atrocities of the enemy, of the reasons why Our Troops are willing to risk all and sacrifice much for Freedom. The former refuses to allow light on the subject. And just as the people of Dachau did not wish to know what occurred behind the walls, neither do the shoppers at the mall wish to know the atrocities of the enemy we face.
But the information is readily available, if only the citizen will look. It may have been more pleasant to think that only work was going on behind the walls, but the truth was available. It may be more pleasant to believe that evil does not exist, that unarmed citizens can combat Taliban thugs on their own, that only allowing others to fight their own oppressors, no matter the odds is the right way to "let them choose their own government,"
But this enemy is not so easily defeated by simple citizens that only want to live their lives in peace, and the freedom of the Afghan people is directly tied to the safety of the American people.
Stumble It!
