Happy Birthday, Greece
As you may or may not know, today marks the 186th anniversary of modern Greek independence--March 13, 1821, a very important day indeed in European and world history. In many ways, the re-establishment of Greece as a nation--freed from the tyranny of the Ottoman Turks, with the help of some Western allies, including Great Britain--was to Christendom what the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 was to the faith of Judaism. It helped bring full circle the enlightened, glorious, democratic traditions of the past--although Greece did not become a republic for another century--and struck yet another massive blow to the already-declining Ottomans. (Thank God!)
We could use another such victory today as we wage war with the barbaric radical Muslims a la al-Qaeda and the Mehdi Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. If only Iraq could become the Greece or Israel of Islam. Wouldn't that be something? A colossal step forward for democracy, Islam, and the Middle East, indeed the globe...proof that the silent prayers and wishes of millions of moderate, peaceful, freedom-loving Muslims worldwide were finally answered. A first step, indeed, in creating modernistic--not simply Islamist--democracy in the Arab world. An inspiration for the oppressed masses in our "allied" kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in Sudan and Libya and Somalia, indeed in ultra-fundamentalist, nuclear-minded Iran.
But how can we expect such a milestone if we leave Iraq prematurely? If we allow weakness, cowardice, politics, indeed betrayal of our own military, to dictate our plans? I wish the American people, especially the spineless Democratic Party, would remember Sherman's words: "War is all Hell." When I listen to Jack Murtha, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other liberals speak about war, I wonder--especially in the case of Murtha, who has already felt the bitter sting of losing a war--if they know anything about military tactics, strategy, or history. War sucks, people! At best it's bloody, horrifying, and traumatic; at worst it's devilish, immoral, and insane...but there are times when it has to be fought. Deposing Saddam--a narcissistic dictator (is there any other kind?) who had killed 300,000 of his own people, in addition to hundreds of thousands of others--was a noble thing. What was ignoble was our administration's incompetent inability to give 20 good reasons to the American public for the invasion, instead of one majorly botched reason. That doesn't make the Iraq War wrong, folks.
What if the Brits or Russians had given up on Greece in 1826, after the Greeks suffered a huge defeat at Missolonghi, five years into the war? Or if the West had deserted Israel in the 1940s as she tried to establish her post-Holocaust, two millennia-overdue homeland in Palestine? We cannot do that to Iraq, or we will reap the whirlwind--at home, abroad, and at the hands of both history and Heaven. God loves liberty and those who long for it, but He despises those too arrogant to share it. Let us not disappoint Him, as we very likely did when we retreated prematurely from Vietnam and Cambodia in 1973. Fight...to...win. At the very least, we owe it to 3,000 dead and 20,000 wounded Americans. Remember that, will you?
We could use another such victory today as we wage war with the barbaric radical Muslims a la al-Qaeda and the Mehdi Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. If only Iraq could become the Greece or Israel of Islam. Wouldn't that be something? A colossal step forward for democracy, Islam, and the Middle East, indeed the globe...proof that the silent prayers and wishes of millions of moderate, peaceful, freedom-loving Muslims worldwide were finally answered. A first step, indeed, in creating modernistic--not simply Islamist--democracy in the Arab world. An inspiration for the oppressed masses in our "allied" kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in Sudan and Libya and Somalia, indeed in ultra-fundamentalist, nuclear-minded Iran.
But how can we expect such a milestone if we leave Iraq prematurely? If we allow weakness, cowardice, politics, indeed betrayal of our own military, to dictate our plans? I wish the American people, especially the spineless Democratic Party, would remember Sherman's words: "War is all Hell." When I listen to Jack Murtha, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other liberals speak about war, I wonder--especially in the case of Murtha, who has already felt the bitter sting of losing a war--if they know anything about military tactics, strategy, or history. War sucks, people! At best it's bloody, horrifying, and traumatic; at worst it's devilish, immoral, and insane...but there are times when it has to be fought. Deposing Saddam--a narcissistic dictator (is there any other kind?) who had killed 300,000 of his own people, in addition to hundreds of thousands of others--was a noble thing. What was ignoble was our administration's incompetent inability to give 20 good reasons to the American public for the invasion, instead of one majorly botched reason. That doesn't make the Iraq War wrong, folks.
What if the Brits or Russians had given up on Greece in 1826, after the Greeks suffered a huge defeat at Missolonghi, five years into the war? Or if the West had deserted Israel in the 1940s as she tried to establish her post-Holocaust, two millennia-overdue homeland in Palestine? We cannot do that to Iraq, or we will reap the whirlwind--at home, abroad, and at the hands of both history and Heaven. God loves liberty and those who long for it, but He despises those too arrogant to share it. Let us not disappoint Him, as we very likely did when we retreated prematurely from Vietnam and Cambodia in 1973. Fight...to...win. At the very least, we owe it to 3,000 dead and 20,000 wounded Americans. Remember that, will you?
posted by Douglas Schrock at 5:08 PM
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