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Monday, August 14, 2006
Leave Iraq and deaths lose meaning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before reality intervened — a terrorist plot to down 10 airliners over the Atlantic — national Democrats were coalescing on the fringe as the anti-war party, insisting on early “redeployment” from Iraq while celebrating the primary defeat of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) to a one-trick pony running as the darling of The New York Times and the anti-war left.
After a discreet silence brought on by the chilling reminder to the world that Islamic fascist evil is unappeasable, the Redeploy Democrats will return, searching anew for the marketing phrase that will give cut-and-run an appealing respectability. This is, in fact, the cycle since Sept. 11, 2001, when for a few weeks or months, the visceral pacifism of the left was briefly suppressed, partly because of shock and partly for the practical political reason that the country was in no mood for surrender, however packaged.
The cycle, then, is to remain quiet when horrors lurk, then gradually expand the criticism, nipping at the edges of the Bush administration until they perceive sufficient weakness to attack directly.
The pattern for the left is the same as that of al-Qaida terrorists — which is not to equate criticism with terrorism or even with a lack of patriotism, but merely to note that the strategy for success, military or political, is to find and exploit the opponent’s weaknesses.
When President Bush is strong, the left carps among themselves. When America is strong, its enemies stew, but don’t strike.
This war is about staying the course. It simply, plainly, unequivocally is.
The American poet Archibald MacLeish, who served in World War I and later as Librarian of Congress, wrote a poem that expresses clearly the stakes for this generation in Iraq. It’s called “The Young Dead Soldiers.” The poem:
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this.
They say: We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.
Three images of abandonment haunt. One is that of desperate Vietnamese clinging to helicopter skids as Saigon fell in 1975. Another was the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in 1980 when the bodies of eight service members were left on the desert floor. And Mogadishu, 1993.
Their deaths mean what we make them. Those who drive the intellectual and political engine of the Democratic Party’s drift to pacifism and appeasement define Vietnam’s deaths as the product of misdirected adventurism. Abandon Iraq now and the lives of young dead soldiers are debris on the desert floor, for the worth of their sacrifice will be defined, as Vietnam was, as misguided adventurism or worse, the product of lies.
This is not a party— the one that coalesced in this nation in the days leading up to last Tuesday — that can be allowed to succeed.
No matter the marketing terminology, no matter the soothing reasonableness of their assurance that they are advocating something other than surrender, no matter their blissful assurance (for they believe it sincerely) that diplomacy and understanding can satisfy the dragon, the policies they advocate keep this nation at risk.
This is a party that professes to support the troops while opposing the mission. That is disingenuous; self-delusional perhaps, but disingenuous.
One soldier’s death is too many if, when the cause for which it is given is done, it has no meaning to us. “They say: We have given our lives but until it’s finished no one can know what our lives gave.
“They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.”
They will mean freedom for Iraqis. They will mean freedom from fear for our grandchildren.
They will mean what the victors write.
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Profiling criminals, terrorists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The gods of political correctness long ago determined that profiling criminals, terrorists and other perpetrators of evil is a really bad thing because it subjects innocents who fit the profile to more intense scrutiny than, say, grandma or the mom with three kids in tow. This PC ban on profiling is an example of the liberal view that the masses of ordinary people are not to be trusted. If allowed to think that practicing Muslims who are male, between the ages of 17 and 40 and who are of Arab or Middle Eastern descent fit the terrorist profile, well, the unwashed might think badly of all young men who fit that profile.
The reality is, though, that those who do fit it have a track record: the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, the murder of 241 U.S. servicemen in the bombing of Marine barracks in Beruit in 1983, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors, 9/11, a series of bombings across Europe, and the most recent plot that was, thank God and British counter-terrorism efforts, thwarted before thousands of bodies were rained over the Atlantic Ocean.
Connect the dots. Clearly there is a group that should be subjected to higher scrutiny. We are after all fighting a war against terrorism, and a specific variety of terrorism, as President Bush said. “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” A former Israeli security officer with El Al, the national airline, Leo Gleser, said “In Israel we use profiling. That means you learn your enemy, learn the way he is going to attack you, and once you know that, you build up your system.”
Profiling is a must. It’s pointless to give equal scrutiny to grandma. Inspection time and secruity personnel are limited. Yes, we should apologize in advance to the innocents who are inconvenienced by the attention that comes with profiling. The profiling no-no came originally with race and even there the PC prohibition has come to mean that when a guy robs a bank, we frequenly are given all manner of description of the suspect — height, weight, how he was dressed — but not the obvious, whether we’re looking for a white guy in a red shirt or a black guy in a red shirt.
Apologize, if need be. But profile. When slim, handsome, middle-age white guy conservatives start blowing up planes, I’ll cheerfully go to the airport an hour early and submit to strip-search if necessary to calm fellow passengers and to discourage potential bombers.
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