Posted on 01/07/2014 6:14:28 AM PST by shortstop
I have a friend who fought in Fallujah.
He is boisterous and confident and full of life. He has the can-do spirit that defines himself and all who have worn the blue cord of the Army Infantry.
But yesterday he was broken.
As he talked about the Iraq war, and specifically the fight for Fallujah, there was a sadness that doesn’t come out in the speeches and books. There wasn’t the never-say-die confidence of a veteran non-commissioned officer, there was instead the dazed uncertainty of a man who looks back and wonders what the hell it was all about.
Why did he face death, why did he inflict death, why did he and his buddies bleed and die on that Godforsaken soil for it all to come to this.
To this?
To an al Qaida win.
Last week Fallujah fell to al Qaida. This generation’s Normandy now flies the Nazi flag. The most intense urban fighting the world has seen since World War II has ended up with the good guys gone and the bad guys triumphant.
Our Iraq transition plan boiled down to us out and al Qaida in. In the political vilification of the president who launched a war our nation and its leaders have disavowed the war itself and, consequently, the men who fought it.
And the prizes they claimed.So the al Qaida flag flies. The Syrian rebels Washington wanted to arm slunk across the border and, their jihadist passions embroiled, sought to defecate on the American legacy by claiming our bloodiest prize.
And my friend wonders what the hell it was all about. He has come to taste the bitterness of the Vietnam veteran, in which the shifting sands of public opinion have turned his days of glory and sacrifice into an expedition of waste and shame.
Iraq is shattered, we have gained nothing, and enemy boots now trod soil bought with American blood.
That’s how it looks.
But that’s not how it is.
That’s not how it is at all.
Because the Iraq war was a resounding win, and every effort there – every life lost there – directly protected the safety and freedom of the American homeland.
America must never forget that, and America’s veterans must never forget that.
The war in Iraq was a diverting effort, a changing of the venue in the war with terror, it was to this war what the Italian campaign was to the Second World War.
Let’s review.
America’s awareness of extremist Islam’s war against Christians, Jews and democracy began on September 11, 2001. Some 3,000 defenseless civilians were killed by that war in the American homeland that day.Extremist Islam had declared the war and chosen the battlefield and the combatants. Their fanatic savages against our wives and mothers, stewardesses and office workers, in our country and on our planes.
That was their choice.
That’s where they wanted to fight.
They wanted to slaughter our unarmed families in our homeland.
And we didn’t stand for that.
We hit them with the left and we hit them with the right. We quickly took down their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, and then we chose a diversionary fight to attract the scum of the Muslim pond – the steady crop of jihadists – and destroy them.
To be blunt, we needed to bleed them down, to draw them into a fight and etrit them. We needed a grinder for the enemy’s passion, and Iraq was that grinder.
They wanted to fight unarmed civilians in America, we got them to fight our trained soldiers in Iraq. We changed the target of their ire – from mothers to Marines – and we changed the battlefield – from our home to theirs.
And we stacked them up like cordwood.
And we called it the Iraq war, though it really had nothing to do with Iraq. Yes, there was talk about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein, and maybe leaders actually did think those things were important. But the guiding hand of Providence, which has stood around the American campfire from the days of Valley Forge, had another agenda.
It was a strategy of diversion, to misdirect and blunt the jihadist hate, in order to achieve an overriding objective – to secure and protect America.
My friend and his comrades did not fight and die for Fallujah, they fought and died for America. It wasn’t about that soil, it was about this soil. And it was not a loss, it was a win.
Yes, the al Qaida flag flies over Fallujah today, but it does not fly over America.
There was a mission, it was accomplished. And though there may be a new mission today, and tomorrow, it does not diminish or negate the mission of yesterday.
The purpose of the Iraq war was to keep them busy, to draw them away from our families and homes, to let them bleed into their own soil instead of into ours. The verdict of the Iraq war is not what happens today in Iraq, it’s what happens today – and over the last decade – in America.
We won. The Iraq conflict was noble, purposeful and successful.
And the Iraq veteran is an American hero. He bought us a decade of American security, and his successors are buying another decade today.
Obama owns the lose of the Iraq war, period!
PFL
Just like ‘Nam: “We were winning when I left.”
Our politicians are feckless and corrupt.
All added together they are not worth a bucket of warm spit.
Weird article.
Taliban are taking over Afghanistan also.
Bu make believe weddings are what is most important.
-> Yes, the al Qaida flag flies over Fallujah today, but it does not fly over America.
Our CIC is working on that...
True. And he doesn’t care! A lot of those who died would have voted Republican anyhow.
That was the goal and it was not for the American people's gain.
The Syrian rebels Washington wanted to arm slunk across the border and, their jihadist passions embroiled, sought to defecate on the American legacy by claiming our bloodiest prize.
Syria is the be shattered next, using Al-CIA-duh jihadists as the ground troops. Uncle Scam has been giving them weapons and money and now Fallujah has been given to them as a cross border base of operations.
Not to mention Afghanistan.
I said back when we invaded Iraq, that we’d better be prepared to be there for at least 20 years, or else this would precisely happen.
We won the first and second Iraq war. What’s going on now is the third Iraq war and we’re not involved.
But if the author is correct and the war we fought was to keep them busy, are more 911 attacks coming? We’re not keeping them busy anymore.
This is Vietnam 1974. Democrats have a history of squandering the sacrifices of Americans. And they do so with pride and conviction.
We are broke. PERIOD
We still have troops in Germany and Japan. The good news is that the 2 countries and their people had a long history of structure as well as education-meaning hope. Does Iraq have any hope of that? We Had to leave.
I say turn the country over to the Chinese. Otherwise just turn over all captured weapons to the population.
Part of the answer is to drop silly, obviously untrue concepts like “extremist Islam” (which this author uses). We must admit that Islam is Islam. George Bush set us back at least 25 years in facing up to the issue with his “religion of peace” BS.
Islam simply is not a religion of peace. It is a totalitarian political system that uses religion as a beard, and it is completely incompatible with Western ideas of individual liberty.
Only when we admit what we are truly up against can we begin to have a rational conversation about what we do next.
“So, what’s the answer? Do we start all over again in Iraq? Did we really think we were really finished when we left Iraq?”
The answer is that we never should have gone in there in the first place as this “war on terror” can never be won just like the “war on drugs” can never be won. Face it, all you guys that were all ra-ra for us invading are finding out what anyone with a brain knew from the beginning which was that we would do the same thing we did in Vietnam (kill a bunch of natives lose a few of our own and then go home).
The man in the article has finally figured out that it was all a waste and that nothing has changed or will change. It does not matter who is in office as Bush was doing the same thing as Obama (and really there is not much difference between the two as far a how they have acted in office). Try and learn from this the next time some pol stands up and shouts that Amerika is in danger and we need to kill people.
This is what happens when you declare victory without destroying your enemy.
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