I can remember being told about freedom and what it cost our forefathers. Heroic tales of George Washington, the brave ride of Paul Revere and so many great deeds fill me with pride. My father told me many things about WWII that made me glad to be an American. Those were heroes and men to be admired by all, not just Americans.
Lately it seems our wars and reasons for them, have become a little more gray and unclear as to who and why we are fighting. We went into Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq for various specific reasons, but when we step back and really look at them, we often find more questions than answers, and more doubt than resolution. Why are some wars so much more divine of purpose than others?
In each of our wars prior to Korea, we had a universal and identifiable enemy that most anyone would want to destroy. Enemies like oppression, slavery, tyranny, and genocide gave us all the justification most anyone would need to declare war. We can all agree these things are among the most detestable acts one can do to another.
However if these things are such vile atrocities and warrant our use of violent force to stop them; why are they such trifles today? One would think in the modern age of instant access to cable news networks, and the information super-highway, we would be more able to spot the bad guy and unite against him. Sadly we are usually unable to either agree who the bad guy is, or how to stop him, and in the end they usually get away.
Case in point: We went into Iraq in the nineties to free Kuwait, and when we did we left. There was no call to go in and remove the tyrant leading them that was not our goal. Our goal was to free Kuwait, and that's all we did. We did what we set out to do without misleading the people or lying to congress. Our troops were well supplied, and we had a set plan in place with UN support. Not to mention the help of several other countries.
This time we went into Iraq with no basis of fact other than the idea that Al Qaeda might have had terrorist training camps there and Saddam had gassed his own people.
Sure there was also information about WMD's but that was secondary at first. That information was handed out as a primer to get us thinking about them in a worse light. Once the idea was there, the stories of Saddam's regime using WMD's on his own people, and how he plans to use it on us seemed so much more palatable. If all or at least most of these claims were proven true, our war would have been justified, but sadly they have almost all been proven false. The only bit of truth in all of it was the fact he was a tyrant and did gas his own people.
The man responsible for the most heinous and disgusting act of violence in modern times has gone uncaught and unpunished while we wage war against a lesser threat. We go looking in Iraq for a man who is living and last seen in Afghanistan, and while nearly all of the 911 terrorists are Saudi Arabian including Osama Bin Laden himself (who is a nephew of the Saudi royal family by the way).
All the while this mess is reported by competing news networks, each with their own versions of the story and agenda. Is there any way possible to get the real truth when our media has been so tainted by politics and corporate sponsorship?
Our leaders are now so busy telling us who amongst them is at fault; they forget what their job is. They are so wrapped up in their respective parties that democracy has now become secondary to maintaining power. They tell us we are not safe because of our freedoms and with a little bit of "tweaking" they could do a much better job. Benjamin Franklin once wrote:" Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." If the idea of liberty itself were not enough to convince you, maybe the words of a wise man will. My freedoms do not make you unsafe; neither will my imprisonment because the threat does not come from me. The threat they scare you with comes from somewhere else, and comes here by their mistakes in foreign policy and immigration.
The worst part of this whole thing is in the way our government has treated the best and brightest of our youth. These brave and heroic young men and women volunteered to go over and fight terrorism for us, and when they get there they find the enemy always changing, a war that is all but unsupported back home, a poorly planned effort, and insufficient supplies. Want to know how to hurt a soldier the most? Ask some of the Vietnam veterans and I bet they can tell you.
