[Lando Lincoln]

Thanks MM!!

[Squantos]

KaPing !

[IncPen]

...ping...

[Calpernia]

Great Post!

>>>Those who actually endure such daily horror as can be found in the world want one thing and one thing only: they want to come here. They want to come here NOW.

I started Bergen Community College Paramus, NJ in 1986. Made immediate friends with the girl who sat in front of me in Math, Parvenae. A month into class I went to her apartment to tutor her. She just couldn't grasp the math and we had a horrible language barrier to overcome that kept me from tutoring her in the loud Cafe at school.

At her apartment, I met her sister and brother who were only one and 2 years older than her. No parents??? After I arrived, a group of their friends came over with Pizza hoping they could pick up tips from whatever tutoring I was going to give Parvenae. Unfortunately, that night, the math book stayed unopened on the coffee table. A slice of pizza stayed folded in my hand and was never bitten into. "I WAS THE ONE TUTORED!" I learned where they all came from. They were all my age. They were all without family here. Their families payed to have them smuggled out of Iraq. They could never speak to their families again. They could never go back. They lived on grants from our Refugee Resettlement Program. The stories I heard made me numb.

[Poohbah]

PING-A-LING!

[dead]

I'm supposed to be working!

(bump to read later)

[My back yard]

Powerful, wonderful. Every one of the protesters and those who are protester wanna-be's - which is really nothing but a wanna-be cool just like the 60's fool - should read this from start to finish.

[ThinkDifferent]

Outstanding.

[CholeraJoe]

[Balata]

Great post, thanks!

[Just another Joe]

Bump for later

[sneakypete]

1. The impending military action is not the pre-emptive opening of hostilities against a sovereign nation, but rather the continuation of hostilities began by Iraq in 1990 with their invasion of Kuwait;

Which resulted in us invading Iraq,a sovereign nation. Last time I checked,Kuwait wasn't a part of the US.

said resumption being a direct result of repeated and flagrant violations of the ceasefire signed by Iraq in 1991.

WELL! My GOODNESS! We just can't have people running around all willy-nilly and ignoring the all-powereful and all-mighty UN,can we? After all,one day they will assume their rightful places as "Masters of the Universe",and maybe if we are lucky,US forces can then officially be the worlds cops!

The rest of it is just more Rah,Rah,HorseHillary. Whoever wrote this is a propogandist on the level of Goebbels. Iraq wasn't the one who attacked us on 9-11,that was Saudi Arabians. If this were a REAL war against terrorism,we would have already taken out Saudi Arabia. Instead,we are going to have our young people lose their lives to protect Saudi Arabia from the biggest threat to their security,Iraq.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

What a piece of work.

Especially this:

If we have the courage of our convictions, if we do indeed feel that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth fighting and dying for, then we may find that freeing the world is in our national interest, regardless of the cost.

So on the eve of this new tempest, let us remember, together, a final image – to me, the most hopeful of all.

Let us remember Afghanistan.

Let us remember that the brutal Soviets we so sullied ourselves fighting during the Cold War had installed in their southern neighbor a puppet dictator, who ruled small enclaves at the point of a tank cannon and tore their nation into civil war that culminated in the atrocities of the Taliban. Let us remember the million Afghan civilians who died forcing off that yoke.

Let us remember an image from that ruin of a nation, in June of 2002, at a meeting hall in Kabul. Inside were all manners of warlords, refugees, opposition leaders, even their old king. Women demanding positions of power, wizened old tribal leaders opposing them at every turn, mullahs and warlords making veiled threats and all the rest of the unruly, loud, preposterous accoutrements of democracy that make up a Loya Jirga or a US Congress.

And let us remember the image of US soldiers, forming a cordon, a bubble of security around this howling, screaming catfight. Not inside. Not dictating terms. Not so much as laying a hand on a gavel. But rather outside, armed and powerful, seeing to it that the future of that tortured country rested in the hands of their own people, protecting this newborn, imperfect, and astonishingly fragile proto-democracy against the legions of Taliban, Al Qaeda and petty warlords who would like to see nothing so much as its failure. Remember them guarding the life and pure, undiluted courage of Hamid Karzai. And remember our soldiers giving them, day by painful day, another week, another month without torture and repression so that they in all their infinitely adaptable humanity have the time to come to find such things intolerable.

Remember that, and smile. Because that is America at war.

[Just another Joe]

Where the people rule, soldiers do not come jackbooted in the night.

And I'm sorry to say that while we try to bring the rest of the world OUT of this circumstance, we ourselves seem to be going INTO this circumstance.

[BraveMan]

Lando Lincoln, thank you for posting the article . . .

Calpernia, welcome to FreeRepublic.

[Ancesthntr]

Thanks for the post. This has been bookmarked, and will be forwarded to everyone on my email list. This is a stunningly well-written article, one which cogently explains the case for war and picks apart the case against it. Whatever the current doubts, I suspect that history will smile very kindly on those Americans, most notably GWB, who had the fortitude to focus on the most important goal: the safety of the American people. Sometimes, the best way to be left alone is to make sure that no one who can kill you, and who has expressed a perverse desire to do so, is left standing.

Before I get flamed by the isolationists out there, let me say this: I, too, am horrified by the truly evil potential of various laws passed since 9/11. In the hands of the wrong people (Hillary and her fellow travelers), these are the tools for imposing a dictatorship here at home. I wish that GWB had the wisdom to veto those laws (and "campaign finance reform), as being terribly destructive of our freedoms. We did better on this score during WW2, and there's no reason that we can't do so in the present circumstances.

[Brad C.]

Thanks for a great read!

[GiovannaNicoletta]

read later

[NYpeanut]

bookmarked

[tomkat]

bookmark / bump / thanks