Of Wars Lost and Won

This past week a prominent American political figure declared that the war in Iraq was lost. If that is the case, why are we still there? Why waste one more life on a lost cause? And what of the lives already lost...were they tossed away for nothing?

No. The answer is no. We can win. We will win if we make the decision that defeat and failure are not an option. Regardless of whether an American citizen agrees with going to war in the first place, once we are in a war we must succeed. We must have peace through victory. Nothing else matters once we commit to such a thing as terrible as war we must not quit until we win. One life is too many to throw away in a war that is not worth fighting and winning. So once we have stepped the first irreversible step down the path of war we cannot and must not stop until victory is acheived. Of course we must be willing to do whatever it takes to win, if we are not so willing then we must not begin wars in the first place.

Please let the troops know that you are behind them and support them. The worst thing a soldier can believe is that they or their brothers in arms have sacrificed all for nought. So when you support the troops support the cause and the mission. You do not have to agree with the why or the how but once our Great Nation makes a decision to go to war then we must all be behind the effort. Nothing is more basic than this most simple and fundamental principle of citenzenship and nothing is more critical to the survival of our own or any Nation-State.

When we go to war, we are the good guys and the enemy is evil. There can be questioning or second-guessing that once the battle has begun. Of course, this is what makes the careful discernment of when and why we go to war so incredibly criticial.

Terror Response Training or Pointless Bigotry

Today a New Jersey public school held a terrorism drill. The purpose of the drill was an admiralbe one...to prepare for a possible attack by religious extremists. The problem is that the drill was completely divorced from any reality that you and I live in as Americans. Worse the drill probably did more harm than good because the "terrorists" in the drill might just as well have been members of the Mickey Mouse Club. That organization certainly seems like a gang and just look at what famous alumn Brittney has done to her hair.

I promise we can all sleep soundly in our beds tonight knowing that there is no organized group or disorganized group of right-wing fundamentalist Christians anyhwere in the world that advocates violence and certainly not violence against school children or random violence against Americans. Sure there are the occasional abortion clinic bombers or the Timothy McVeighs of the world but those are individual nuttters acting alone. They are not and never were part of some sinister clandestine terror cell of sunday school teachers that is waiting in the shadows to perpetrate violence on school children in New Jersey.

Our children would be better served being told to look both ways before crossing the street rather than having to live in fear of the quite girl named Ruth that wears big glasses and brings her bible to school. After all, don't most Americans claim to be part of the Christian faith?

The secular progessive school administers in New Jersey may think this was a clever game but we must all ask ourselves, "why we are waisting our time and tax dollars making up bad guys in order to further a secular worldview?" After all there are plenty of real bad guys out there that promise every single day that they are going to kill us. They live and breathe for nothing else. Maybe we should spend our time being vigilante against real threats instead of creating new ones.

Have You Been Bribed?

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money - Alexis de Tocueville.

This seems to be a truly challenging and yet simple thought. Are we there as a people? If so, when did we get there?