Posted on 12/26/2004 6:28:45 PM PST by wagglebee
Once upon a time, Americans recognized the unpleasant fact that, as Sherman said, "war is hell," and they acted accordingly, accepting the pain and the losses as the price that had to be paid for victory.
Americans understood it during the Revolutionary War, when it took six long years of losing battle after battle to achieve victory. Facing the mightiest army on the face of the earth, lacking the most rudimentary tools of war, even going shoeless in the winter snow, often hungry, they endured – and by enduring they triumphed.
We don't have to go that far back to find instances where the nation took it on the chin again and again, watching in horror the growing casualty lists, going without the staples of everyday living, often waking to read about another blood-soaked battlefield far away from the homeland, yet remaining firm in the resolve to stick it out.
We saw that in World War II when the cost of a single day's combat was the lives of 5,000 or 6,000 husbands, fathers and sons who would never come home to their loved ones. We understood that these things were the very nature of warfare, and we gritted our teeth and stayed the course. We went to war to win, and we endured until we did.
Something has happened since then. It may have been around before Vietnam, but it arrived in full force during that tragic war. Hammered time and time again by growing casualty lists, mislead by the media's constant anti-war drumbeat that played up every failure and played down every victory – such as depicting the Tet Offensive, which utterly destroyed the Viet Cong, as a military disaster for the United States – we began to doubt ourselves. We lost the will to endure, and lost our first war as a result.
It's happening again. We are fighting a war in Iraq, and the doubters and the opportunists who seek political gain are doing their utmost to create uncertainty about America's involvement there.
That's the case with those Republicans who are using Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the current convenient target in their efforts to separate themselves from the Bush administration – a patently obvious maneuver to align themselves to run for president in 2008.
In the run-up to the November elections, the Democrats made it obvious they hoped that the economy would collapse before Election Day. They are now gleefully anticipating a collapse of the United States' effort to win the war in Iraq, and they appear willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen, regardless of the damage it will do to the nation.
What we are seeing now is a steady wearing-down of our will to endure. Every death is reported as if death in combat was anything but the toll war normally exacts. We endured the deaths of 5,000 young Americans on the beaches of Normandy and forged ahead to free Europe of Nazi domination. We saw it as the price we had to pay to win. Some 6,000 U.S. Marines died in the sands of Iwo Jima in less than a month, but we endured that horror, and not long after we conquered Japan and won the war.
Yet when we lose 14 brave young men in a single insurgent bombing, we act as if it were proof that we cannot prevail. Enough of that reasoning will sap our will to endure, and we will end up turning tail and running away, leaving turmoil in the area far worse and more dangerous to our interests than what existed before we went to war there.
Many Americans either opposed going to war in Iraq or expressed serious doubts about the wisdom of going to war there, but that debate is over. We are there, and we have to accept what Gen. MacArthur once said: "There is no substitute for victory."
And there is no substitute for endurance if victory is to be won.
Michael Reagan takes very little time to make an important point. A little "preaching to the choir" is good once in a while.
What we need is Patriots running the country, not politicians.
Mike Reagan and Sean Hannity are two names that come to my mind.
I agree. And that is part of what make the second term Bush administration so appealing. With the possible exception of Condi Rice, no one on the senior team has any political further ambition. Because of that, they can work to defend the country and not worry about the next election. In the short run, this may not be the greatest news for the GOP, but it makes the country safer.
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NEVER FORGET
JOHN F. KERRY
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
DIANE "Hillary" RODHAM
...were all on the side of our Terrorist Enemy HO CHI MINH's push for a Communist Victory over Freedom and US in a then Free South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
...Whose side are they on now, I wonder, with our own Freedom now at directly at stake here at home..?
JOHN KERRY = Enemy of Vietnam Vets
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1320
.."IS it SAFE?" = HILLARY on Senate Armed Services..
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=629
Remember the Lost and Suffering on September 11, 2001
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33
NEVER FORGET
.
The real message from these examples is that you will endure if it's your own land that is being fought for, because it is so critical to you. But you won't endure to win in some foreign land, because it isn't as important to you. Also the lesson from Vietnam.
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NEVER FORGET
The LIBERTY President, BUSH, has promised during a BUSH Presidency:
FREEDOM's Return to
Communist Cuba
Communist Vietnam
Communist North Vietnam
..as well as..
FREEDOM's Arrival to
All the countries of the Middle East
...as Ameria's own best Self-Defense against future Terrorist attacks here at home.
During the 1990's the Communist Terroist HO CHI MINH Ally CLINTONS refused to bring our Terrorist Enemy OSAMA bin LADEN here when freely offered to them by the Sudan 3 times.
The Enemy is now Within...
and always has been.
NEVER FORGET
.
Too bad the Libs haven't faced the Fact that a generation of 'Nam vets exist that will not allow their counterparts in the anti-war movement to be successful twice.
Too bad they inconveniently overlook a new generation has sprung up that refuses to concede defeat even to our own defeatist countrymen.
Too bad McCain & the McCain-lite squadran "misunderestimate" not only the President but the voters necessary to achieve victory in the primaries.
If they are dedicated to our loss, I am dedicated to our victory. If they are dedicated to lowering the morale of our troops, I am dedicated to lifting it. If they believe they will sail to a RNC nomination, then they fail to understand my desire to ensure their humiliation at the polls for this betrayal.
Amen to that!
And WWII and WWI were fought where???? In America? Is that why we had the will to fight then? Get real.
America was united in WW2 because the Commies wanted us to defeat Hitler to save Stalin. Normal Americans wanted us to win to keep the world safe for America. So everyone was on the same page. Before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the Commies had the libs snookered into avoiding war in Europe.
In Korea, the Commies were on the defensive, since in the post-war the normals realized how bad the Commie infiltration was and started to fight back. That only lasted a few years, though, and the Reds ended up winning the argument by the mid-50s, getting McCarthy censured and restoring Hollywood to control by the libs. In the universities and the "commanding heights" of society, they gathered strength. Vietnam was their first opportunity to create a full-blown opposition to a war, and they took advantage.
The left now is not as strong or influential as it was in the 60s, but it is trying to regain strength, and its control of the media is augmented by its control of certain religious organizations and a total control of the universities. Constant harping on supposed mistake or magnifying every death can reduce support for the war over time, as people get tired of the drumbeat. It is unfortunate that the President's people don't understand the need for better PR in the war on terror.
The WWII example in Europe is better, but the Brits were fighting for their homeland and their continued existence long before the US decided to come in and directly help them.
In the Pacific, the Japs had attacked US territory in Hawaii and scared the $hit out of the folks on the West Coast, so that started out as a homeland defense act.
The final stages of WWII were on their territory, but that was necessary to end the whole thing.
You need to get real yourself.
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