Monday’s blog about Sergeant John Basilone and of his valor got me to thinking: Wars fought to lose should never begin. Basilone was one of hundreds of thousands who, as a group, earned the sobriquet, “The Greatest Generation,” a term coined by Tom Brokaw for the title of his book about World War II.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, this nation made a decision to mobilize for an all-out war effort. American armed forces were supported without reservation. That war would be won. There was no incessant bickering by Washington politicians about whether we should be in it; how to wage it; or of setting an artificial timetable to withdraw our troops from Europe and the Pacific. Imagine how it might have been, if the milquetoasts of that time had prevailed.
The Iraq war presents a stark contrast to the conflict of the 1940’s. The tragedy of Iraq is that our men and women soldiers who fight just as bravely as did those of WWII (all American warriors have shared that reputation) are having their energies and lives squandered. Since the fall of Baghdad, the Iraqi conflict has turned into a Washington miscalculation, and our soldiers have become pawns on a beltway chess board.
American troops – who fight, die or get maimed – deserve leadership. And the rest of us who are behind our warriors don’t want to have their lives and our treasure needlessly expended in a futile nation-building effort.
Where in Washington, among all the politicians and their advisors, is there a lick of common sense, or even an ounce of the courage which our troops show daily?
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