This should not be a Red State war. We all prosper or fail as one. And I do fear that the split in our country is deepening to be an irrevocable long-lasting feature of our political culture. The calls to withdraw from Iraq even as we are winning is shameful. It betrays our national interests and the troops who fight and risk their lives for a nation that by its actions is not sure it values their determination to win and their willingness to die trying.
It also saddens me that words written when real Patriots struggled in the face of defeat after defeat against a superpower, are necessary to bolster Americans today even as we, a superpower, win our war against a barbarian enemy.
Is it really possible that we should experience a winter of discontent in the middle of summer as we show that we are indeed conquering hell?
Exit strategies are for losers. Victory is what a confident people who are sure that their civilization is just and who are confident that their soldiers will achieve call for even in difficult times.
Via The Corner is this wonderful piece by Podhortetz. He recounts Thomas Paine's frustrations and disgust with those Americans who supported the British; those who remained neutral but voiced support for the British; and those who supported the Patriots in the first hopeful months but who counseled defeat when the fight for our freedom grew tough and defeat actually loomed:
And so, “quitting this class of men . . . who see not the full extent of the evil that threatens them,” Paine turned “to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out,” and rested his hopes on them.
These hopes, we know and thank God for it, were not disappointed. And neither will be the hopes of those today who likewise see “the full extent of the evil that threatens” us; who understand the necessity of the war that our country has been waging against it; who recognize the moral, political, and intellectual boldness of how George W. Bush has chosen to fight this war; and who take pride in the nobility of what the United States, at whose birth Tom Paine assisted, is now, more than 200 years later, battling to achieve in Iraq and, in the fullness of time, in the entire region of which Iraq is so crucial a part
Stand nobly with our troops who do not have the luxury of doubting our just cause when our enemies seek to kill them and throttle the democracy being born in the cradle of civilization. Stand nobly recognizing that our troops are winning this war for us. Stand nobly for a war that is just and that holds the hope of creating a better future for so many and which will protect us better than doubling our military budget.
And stand nobly for those who live under despotism who quietly hope that we will win this war, and thus strike a blow for freedom that may yet reach their own corner of the world.
