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American soldiers are as impressive abroad as we are embarrassing at home - VDH
ELF -- cause you just have to read the entire Victor Davis Hanson piece No, instead let us think today only of American soldiers and the cause for which they fight. Never has America fielded more skilled warriors or sent them into battle for a better causeâthe security of thousands of Americans at home and the promise of something better for millions abroad. Any scarred veteran of a past ageâa Macedonian, Roman, Ottoman, Russian or Englishmanâwould warn us that even an imperialist does not go into the Balkans, Afghanistan, or the Mesopotamia for lucre. These are not nice places and their perennially murderous and internecine clans historically unite only to turn on the invader. Yet into precisely these desolate realms the Americans have gone to rid the world of Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein, the latter all in their own singular ways worthy successors to the spirit of a Hitler or Stalin, their evil inferior only by magnitude rather than intent. Seeking not tribute or oil, our soldiers have deposed such monsters and in their place implanted the seeds of democracyâand succeeded entirely due to their own skill and élan rather than the uniform support and attention of us at home who sent them. snip This past week the enemy has made a grave mistake by coming out of the nocturnal shadows to face at last the American soldier in daylight and in a shooting war he cannot win. Indeed, all that stands between the Iraqi insurgents and their own annihilation is our own sense of American self-restraint and doubt. In his latest boring fatwa, Bin Laden is asking for termsâworse still, mimicking the American Leftâs litany of hatred against Halliburton, oil companies, Zionists, Israel, and the associated bogey-men who, he thinks, have exiled him to his cave. Mr. Sadr is sending mixed messages from his Arafat-like rubble pile. Those in Fallujah claim they suddenly prefer a cease-fire to paradise. None of these ogres are conciliatory because they like us, but rather because they are only now beginning to fear usâand they are beginning to fear us only because the American military is far better than they and if let loose will make short work of them all. snip At a time when bin Laden assured the Middle East that Americans were weak and decadent, the US military tore apart the most fanatical and savage fighters of a savage Middle Eastâthe only reprieve came from diplomats who fretted about the rhetoric of the hapless Arab Street. Far better than we at home, our soldiers grasped that fighting fascists for consensual government is a noble cause and should have been the source of great pride among the American people. Posted by: Sherry 2004-04-18 |
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