The total US casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom is almost 900 since the US went into Iraq, and yet that number is eclipsed by the Iraqis killed by terrorists in the past year. The latest car bombing that killed Nine people many of them policemen and recruits is an example. The news story includes a picture that just shows the immensity of the bombs that terrorists are throwing at the Iraqi people, police, and the Iraqi officials. Looking at that huge crater, I wonder "only 9 lost their lives?" and I understand the weariness of many Iraqis:
Lesson: Don't underestimate the lethality of the enemy. And understand that if terrorism didnt work at some level, it would have been defeated already. Despite the losses, which are heart-breaking, the real war of attrition here is the attrition of the spirit. That is what the terrorists want to do - wear US and the Iraqis down to giving up on making the new Iraq a better place. The terrorists' goal is to make us give up, like this man wants to, on liberating Iraq. Wrong answer!
We must remember Churchill's words - in 1942 - when tens of thousands of British civilians and soldiers had been killed already, with Britain defeated at Dunkirk, Norway, Singapore, Burma, North Africa, and advancing nowhere, with the British Isles ringed by German U-Boats sinking Britain's lifelines of sea cargo. To some it seemed hopeless, yet Churchill said this:
- " Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy ... Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race."