To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.
Every Memorial Day, we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in combat. With speeches and solemn ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But one fact goes unacknowledged in our Memorial Day tributes: all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily –because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America's freedom.
The proper purpose of a government is to protect its citizens' lives and freedom against the initiation of force by criminals at home and aggressors abroad. The American government has a sacred responsibility to recognize the individual value of every one of its citizens' lives, and thus to do everything possible to protect the rights of each to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This absolutely includes our soldiers.
Soldiers are not sacrificial objects; they are full-fledged Americans with the same moral right as the rest of us to the pursuit of their own goals, their own dreams, their own happiness. Rational soldiers enjoy much of the work of military service, take pride in their ability to do it superlatively, and gain profound satisfaction in protecting the freedom of every American, including their own freedom.
Soldiers know that in entering the military, they are risking their lives in the event of war. But this risk is not, as it is often described, a "sacrifice" for a "higher cause." When there is a true threat to America, it is a threat to all of our lives and loved ones, soldiers included. Many become soldiers for precisely this reason; it was, for instance, the realization of the threat of Islamic terrorism after September 11 — when 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered in cold blood on a random Tuesday morning — that prompted so many to join the military.
For an American soldier, to fight for freedom is not to fight for a "higher cause," separate from or superior to his own life — it is to fight for his own life and happiness. He is willing to risk his life in time of war because he is unwilling to live as anything other than a free man. He does not want or expect to die, but he would rather die than live in slavery or perpetual fear. His attitude is epitomized by the words of John Stark, New Hampshire’s most famous soldier in the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die."
What we owe these men who fight so bravely for their and our freedom is to send them to war only when that freedom is truly threatened, and to make every effort to protect their lives during war — by providing them with the most advantageous weapons, training, strategy, and tactics possible.
Shamefully, America has repeatedly failed to meet this obligation. It has repeatedly placed soldiers in harm's way when no threat to America existed — e.g., to quell tribal conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. America entered World War I, in which 115,000 soldiers died, with no clear self-defense purpose but rather on the vague, self-sacrificial grounds that "The world must be made safe for democracy." America's involvement in Vietnam, in which 56,000 Americans died in a fiasco that American officials openly declared a "no-win" war, was justified primarily in the name of service to the South Vietnamese. And the current war in Iraq — which could have had a valid purpose as a first step in ousting the terrorist-sponsoring, anti-American regimes of the Middle East — is responsible for thousands of unnecessary American deaths in pursuit of the sacrificial goal of "civilizing" Iraq by enabling Iraqis to select any government they wish, no matter how anti-American.
In addition to being sent on ill-conceived, "humanitarian" missions, our soldiers have been compromised with crippling rules of engagement that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above their own. In Afghanistan we refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties; these men continue to kill American soldiers. In Iraq, our hamstrung soldiers are not allowed to smash a militarily puny insurgency — and instead must suffer an endless series of deaths by an undefeated enemy.
To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.
This Memorial Day, we must call for a stop to the sacrifice of our soldiers and condemn all those who demand it. It is only by doing so that we can truly honor not only our dead, but also our living: American soldiers who have the courage to defend their freedom and ours.
The lines have become blurred over the last century. We might almost long for the days when an enemy was an identifiable aggressor state, instead of an insurgency of individuals united by a doctrine.
Then again, if we actually defeated an indentifiable enemy, I believe that the current liberal establishment and the popular media would certainly demonize our nation for such an unkind act. We have already seen them give aid, comfort, and assistance to our enemies in the past, so I can only imagine their reaction to the defeat of our enemies.
Mr. Epstein is correct that we owe more to our soldiers. If we are to send them into harms way, we must give them the resources and the mandate to win a decisive victory. More, we owe them leadership that is more interested in the welfare of this nation as a whole, and our armed forces in particular, than in publick opinion, media image, and re-election.
The frustrating aspect of serving in Vietnam was that our orders seemed to originate from Capitol HIll rather than from our military leaders. The popular media seemed to play a larger role in determining strategy than did military objectives and intelligence.
Ultimately, the cause that a soldier serves is the well-being of that soldier’s comrades. When your nation will not allow one to win a war, then one can only win the day.
“To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.”
Please, name one war ever fought in which somebody did not claim soldiers were being sent off without sufficient cause, exaggerated danger, or insufficient means of self-protection. The American Revolution was fought over nothing nobler than taxes, and there were plenty of people who found sufficient cause to revile the revolutionaries for making trouble. During the American Civil War, pacifists and copperheads blamed Lincoln for dragging the country into an ‘unjust war’ with no clear direction, and the ‘murder’ of thousands of soldiers. In World War I, Wilson, the President elected on a platform of keeping us out of Europe’s war, reversed himself and fanned our thirst for war when he felt forced to concede that remaining neutral was impossible. Roosevelt, to avoid Wilson’s earlier mistake of staying neutral too long and taking cues from Churchhill, used all his political persuasion to get us into the fight against the Nazis. Had pacifist ‘reason’ prevailed in 1776, there’d have been no USA triggering a global democratic revolution around the globe and rule by nobles might still be the rule than the exception. Had Lincoln not dragged us into the bloodiest massacre in history, this continent would have been fragmented into contending confederations, a series of wars squabbling over the territorial remains, and maintaining the institution of slavery throughout large parts of it. Had Wilson obstinately held out in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm would probably have won out over England and France, and had FDR hesitated to drag us into WWII we’d all be good little Nazis; except for the Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Poles, Lithuanians, Mongols, Chinese, Negroes, Indians, Muslims, … &c who would have been efficiently eradicated to make room for the ‘master race’.
There is never enough protection that could have been provided in the minds of some. Hind sight is always 20/20, and it is very easy to find the flaw in our preparations that “should have been obvious to any two-year old”. Except that it isn’t. War is chaos and the enemy also gets a vote. Whatever you don’t bring to the battle, that is where he will concentrate. Time is often more important to minimizing casualties than is the amount of armor carried. For every soldier who goes into battle, our logistics services have to haul about 6 million tons of re-supply each year we are engaged. At some point, you have to choose what to take with you and what to leave behind. At the outset of any invasion, speed is far more important than a little extra body armor. Every general in the world understands this and will tell you that you go with what you’ve got. War is a deadly business and you have to accept the idea some may die or you will never get the job done. If a precondition of battle were that no soldiers would die, no general in the world would ever commit to battle; at least none unwilling to risk himself and his men in order to prevail. That would certainly satisfy the pacifist among us, but then I am not one to take slavery over death.
The height of pacifist success was the Vietnam War, which managed to turn limited tactical success into strategic defeat and the enslavement of millions of South Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. No one in his right mind wants war, and none of us sleep soundly at night wondering did we do the right thing sending these young men and women to risk their lives far from home. Each day we measure the cost and ask “What price freedom”. But make no mistake, freedom _is_ in the balance. It is each time someone comes against us to bring us down. These lunatics want us out of the Middle East and neutralized precisely because we are the only ones in any kind of position to stop them from enslaving their own people. Wherever they’ve succeed in one part of Middle East, they’ve only grow in numbers and power. Eventually, they may be strong enough and have sufficient numbers and weapons to take out Israel. They won’t stop there, though. Islamic dogma demands that Islam have dominance over the whole earth. This is a determined and persuasive enemy, no less determined than were the Nazis and communists in their pursuit of one world order. There is no room in their ideology for both Islam and freedom, because the basis of Islam is submission. There is no separating the civil and theological as in Judeo-Christian philosophies, there is only Islam and submission to it; and those who refuse are deemed the de facto enemies of this pernicious doctrine.
The German’s were in the grip of a madness, as were the communists; two varieties of the same disease. We defeated the Nazis, yet did not punish the Germans. Instead, we released them from the madness that had hold over them, enabling them to resume a more normal national order. We had no hope of doing that without first defeating their armies, navies, and air power. Large numbers of Muslims are similarly in the grip of such madness, willing to die and murder to spread their particular ideology among us. We cannot allow that to happen, for when madmen rule we are all reduced to madness. We must force Islam, or that most fundamental expression of it, to change to the point it can and will coexist among other religions, and give up the idea of domination. Otherwise, we become accomplices to our own demise. I wish there was some hope of appeasement, but long ago realized how foolish it is to appease those who can only admit of one outcome. We did not ask for this war, but we will respond when attacked until the enemy lays down his sword and puts away his ideas of conquest.
Islam is fundamentally more aggressive than most religions, and has been since its founding. Its aggression is part of its appeal, with many recruits having been attracted to the ‘warrior’s’ creed. This is contrary to what many apologists and propagandists have been telling us. Large parts of the Quran and Hadiths deal in the expectations placed on all faithful Muslims to spread their religion by every means, including aggression. There are noble portions in the texts too, but, taken out of context, they belie the overall message; which is intolerance toward any other religious belief. Many Muslims sincerely believe this is no longer the case, or ever was the case. This is both a problem and blessing. It is a problem because Islam cannot be transformed into something more benign until there is some fundamental acceptance of dogmatic error. Those within Islam, those in positions to alter it, must concede the basic flaw of jihad, and choose to eliminate it. Once they are convinced of the idea that this key component, jihad, is more than just the spiritual cleansing propagandists pretend it to be (in fact it’s a call to slaughter) and that it is necessary to their religion’s survival, they may elect to reformulate the religion to eradicate this barbaric practice. It is a blessing because it indicates a large percent of Muslims, either through ignorance or design, no longer subscribe enthusiastically to the killing of others to impose their religion. Yet, they continue to support those who do, as though the question were one of defending Islam. Without consciously altering Islam, they can never eliminate the logical consequence of retaining jihad. Generation after generation of Muslims have been recruited to jihad and made war on rival religions, pagans, and even the non-religious. They are forced to accept the most aggressive dictates of Islam because there is no way to separate what they prefer Islam to be from what Islam obligates them to do. Until this key feature of Islam is purged from practice, text, and comprehension, and discredited so thoroughly it can never be resurrected, we can expect no coexistence with this singular creed.
I do not blame all Muslims for what a large minority of them are doing. I do not blame Islam as a religion, but I do recognize and appreciate the fomenting nature of Islam; and do not delude myself we can accommodate ourselves to it without baring our collective throat. We have an opportunity to release the Muslim people from their madness, as we have done in other wars. In so doing, we safeguard ourselves, our nation, and generations to follow against all sorts of aggression. It isn’t always clear when or if it is time to act, but I feel strongly that this danger is quite real and that the time for acting is now. If we wait until the danger grows stronger, we will find we have waited to long and will have no recourse but to yield.
You may disagree and think us too forward, but you are wrong to think there is no danger at all. You are also wrong in thinking there was no threat from Vietnam. Vietnam was but one front in the piecemeal aggression that is communism. Yes, the communist were determined to bury us in 1965, just as they vowed to do, and to impose their doctrine over the whole world. The soldiers who fought for Vietnam failed to save that country, but they, nevertheless, achieved a victory. They held back the aggression for nine long years while the communists wore themselves out. We came away from Vietnam bloodied and demoralized, but so too did the great communist international brotherhood. The solidarity the communists enjoyed following WWII was strained by competing objectives and mistrust that our wars of containment distilled. By 1972, the Soviet Union was beginning to concede it needed the West to prop up its shaky economy and disillusioned population. China felt itself abandoned by the USSR and determined to make its own policy. At one point the communist rivals came within a hair’s breath of nuclear exchange. North Korea, in turn, refused to follow China’s dictates, and played a game that further pitted the USSR against China. This lead to China giving an ear to the Kissinger proposals and normalized our relations; further distancing the USSR from China.
Consider for a moment what the world would look like, today, had we not stood up to the communist in Vietnam. North Vietnam, with no one to resist them would have swept over South Vietnam and strait on into Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, and parts of Indonesia. This is not supposition or Cold War propaganda, but the stated intention of the North Vietnamese and their Russian backers. From these new bases, armies from each conquered country would be drawn to instigate fresh excuses for invasion until all of Southeast Asia was conquered and Australia on notice, India and the subcontinent dispatched, Africa exploited, and South America agitated. The strategy was to gobble up as many weak links and countries where anti-European sentiment prevailed. But, only as a prelude to the real target which was the West. The communist understood, as Muslim radicals do today, that nothing can be accomplished that ensures their dominance until the West is destroyed as a rival ideology.
I can give you similar analyses of the other wars you note, but it will be ineffective so long as you refuse to acknowledge their basic logic or necessity. I cannot convince you of those propositions you categorically deny. But I can refute the one assertion that we have gone into all these foreign wars without any ‘noble cause’. This country has always stood for freedom, and our soldiers, without exception, go to war with the idea that that is what they are there defending. Our soldier-citizens cherish freedom above all else and, regardless of the objectives of our political chieftains (whatever those may be), they spread the idea of freedom as they go. We do not defend freedom only for ourselves and, though we shrink from being the aggressor, once at war we make freedom our primary objective in every fight. Right now, we are mad as hell at the Muslims, yet do we slaughter them as they would us. No. Instead, we help them rebuild and stabilize their country. We institute real democratic institutions where, before, only the counterfeit has been known. We make it safe to speak out and to demonstrate for better conditions. We put up with noxious behavior for as long as it takes for those liberated to accept that we did not come to stifle their views and are not there stealing their produce. While anti-war protesters here, at home, hotly protest our intentions abroad, the people we liberate unequivocally acknowledge the service and sacrifice of our soldiers in setting them free. We may not always begin on the right foot, yet we usually manage to make things come out right.
I do not know why you feel so cynical against this, your country, or against its record. Like so many who criticize America, you fixate more on what America might have done that is bad than what it has done that is good. It is possible we went to Iraq under a flawed assumption, but it is not shown we did nor intended. We did free millions of people from a murderous and oppressive regime, as freely acknowledged by the Iraqi people. Evidence grows (though rarely acknowledged) that the WMD’s were there; and, if not for all the delays brought on by the protesting, would have been netted had we gone when Bush asked us to. Those WMD’s are still out there and will come back to haunt us for our indecision. As nations go, there is no other that has bled so much in the service of others. No, it is not a spotless record, but it is better than most; and if you are going to be attacked, pray to G-d it is by Americans.
Mr. Epstein is treading on very shaky ground with many of his points. A few holes in his reasoning are evident, but the underlining truth is also evident. As the leader of the free world, a world that gets smaller and smaller each day, America does have a moral and self-serving interest in defending the innocents of this world. I wonder what Mr. Epstein would say to the current Iran problem. When are they a threat? What consititutes a real danger and what is preventive action? Was America correct in waiting until Pearl Harbor to enter WWII? Is isolationism a reasonably answer? How would the Civil War relate to these beliefs?
On the parts of this I agree with, without doubt, our soldiers must not enter combat with rubber gloves. They should always have the right to protect themselves. We should be providing body armour to every soldier who wants it. Viet-Nam should have taught us we cannot fight on foreign soil under guidelines of protecting and not killing. War is ugly and is cruel. The goal of war is to kill your enemy. We need to stop tip-toeing around approval ratings and kill our enemies. I can’t imagine the pain of soldiers during our own Civil War of killing ones countrymen, but both sides believed they were protecting freedom. No one goes into a war believing they are on the “bad” side. America has a tendency to convince itself that it is. We owe our soldiers more than this.
Mr. Bob Stapler, your comments comprise the essay that Mr. Epstein should have written had he the understanding and depth of field you display. Thanks for a fact-based, inspiring response.
I, also, share the sentiment of Mr. White concerning the response by Bob Stapler. Our nation would be infinitely served if students could learn to be as thoughful. Well done! I hope you are running for office some day. Thanks again.
To the retired Generals and anyone that de-grades our soldiers. Shut up!
It is called Treason. Have you sided with the emeny against our soldiers?
A lot, of Americans think so.
A violation of their rights? We violated the rights of our soldiers when we failed to provide armored humvees for all? Is that what you’re saying? Life, Liberty, pursuit of happiness, good healthcare, reliable transportation, viagra, good job, and full protection in a combat zone. These are all rights granted us by our creator I guess.