Steven Green reminds us that the easy part is over when it comes Iraq.
We’re going to war soon, and not everyone we send will be coming home.
If you pray, then pray. If, like me, you don’t, then set aside a moment for a few quiet thoughts.
We’re going to war soon.
Where the anti-war crowd misses the point is confusing being hawkish with being pro-war. No one sane wants war, it’s a messy, dangerous, and bloody business. Wars result in good people on both sides losing their lives, and not always for the right reasons. Yet there are times when the crude instruments of force remain the only options for the betterment of the world. In the case of Saddam Hussein, the risks of more nuclear weapons in the hands of another rogue nation is simply unacceptable, and we must counter this threat with whatever it takes to remove it.
No one who sees the fields of crosses at Normandy or the rows upon rows of graves at Arlington can help but feel a sense of great human loss. Each of those markers represents a human life. A person who dreamed, loved, fought, and died in service of something greater than themselves. Yet each of those lives died with a purpose. Had they not done what they did, the course of human history would be altered for the worse. Had we not fought, the liberty that each of them died for would have been drowned in even more bloodshed.
The world is much more complex than the simple dichotomy of war being bad and peace being good. There are things worth fighting for, and things worth giving one’s life to. Defeating terrorism is one of those things, and Iraq is but one necessary battlefield in that war.
