War is Bad

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…..thank you Captain Obvious. Many of you need to stop reading now…no I am serious you are not going to enjoy this.

I warn you once again, if you have ever said or thought that the US is not the Worlds Policeman you should stop this is not going to be any fun for you. If you have ever lamented that the “World” hates America, this is going to be like having a loop of a dentists drill on your MP3 player.

Yes war is bad but some things are worse. If our news outlets had an embedded reporter on the Bataan Death March there would be a lot more Japanese speakers in the world today. Live TV coverage of the D-Day invasion and you would be choosing your after dinner schnapps and strudel. We have become a nation run by polls, platitudes and the principles of hope as a strategy. Do you honestly believe that had the Civil War been fought with this day and age’s sensibilities that it would have ended the same?

Many Americans believe today that the freedoms we enjoy came as a free general admission ticket for everyone, with people just jockeying for the best seat in the house.
Our predecessors made sacrifices few of us can ever understand to provide us those rights, they were earned, not given. A few weeks ago I helped with a community project to paint a mans house. Upon speaking with the gentleman I learned that he, a black man, had gone in during the D-Day invasion with a segregated unit to fight for a country that still judged him inferior due to his skin color. That is real sacrifice, not having to take Sweet and Low with your Cappuccino because they are out of Nutrasweet. If you really want to support our troops today support their dedication to an ideal that many of us have forgotten. That those rights we enjoy are meant for all, not just those lucky enough to have won the birthplace lotto.

As far as America being the Worlds Policeman, the World has enjoyed the longest uninterrupted general peace since America took on that role after WWII. The Marshal Plan actually gave the vanquished better infrastructure, factories and nutrition in Japan and Germany than what was enjoyed generally in the US after the war. General Marshall understood that the hungry care little of political nuance and those without hope for better focus on grievance, not their future. Many forget the root causes of WWII, it was economics. Japan needed raw materials that it did not possess plus they were just a little megalomaniacal. Germany was being crushed economically by the demanded repayment of reparations for WWI given in the Treaty of Versailles. There are famous photographs of Germans with wheelbarrows of German Marks that were needed to buy loaves of bread during the rampant inflation and depression following WWI. While certain parts of the treaty were slowly watered down by the thirties, the damage was already done. Germany was motivated by grievance, and the restoration of national honor and Hitler played directly to those emotions. Our desire to avoid war led to another hope as a strategy moment in World History and eventually led to 60 million deaths of which 40 million were civilian.

So if you don’t want the United States to be the World’s Policeman, I ask you who instead, Russia, China, France, the United Nations? I can tell you for certain that none of those aforementioned countries want to do it and that the UN can’t even refrain its peacekeepers from raping civilians at refugee camps. As an aside, can you image in the uproar if US soldiers behaved as the UN Peacekeepers have…….24 hour a day bashing yet nary a word when the UN does it.

All the previous leads to this, I defy that the politically correct “the Muslim religion is a religion of peace”. There are many peaceful Muslims, more than the unmerciful but their religion, like all, is made up of people and is not an entity of its own. The zealots have hijacked the religion for power and political gain and the many moderate Muslims have succumbed to the fear of the litmus test of how a Islamist defines what a true Muslim believes. Before you get too satisfied, the Christian/Catholic religion has gone through similar periods.

For those of you now foaming at the mouth that did not take to heart my initial approbation you are going to love the next editorial. It will make the point that if you truly believe in peace you have to support our efforts in Iraq. Now before any of you think me a zealot I agree that mistakes have been made however, I bet you make mistakes when you balance your checkbook and this is a little more complicated than that and dare I say, just as important.