The Iraq War in Perspective

War is hell. But the payoff is immeasurably greater than the initial investment when the cause is just. Iraq is a nascent demonstration of this immutable principle. It's ugly right now. We are losing troops. Iraqi is killing Iraqi. The infant constitutional government is having a hard time establishing order.

We've seen this before, dear readers. Many times. We have just forgotten how expensive the defeat of tyranny and the establishment of democracy can be.

Consider:

We had to fight Britain twice to secure our full independence from her.

We had to fight a dreadful war among and within ourselves to create a truly United States divorced from the despicable practice of slavery.

It took two horrific world wars to secure the world from global domination under the heel of tyranny and barbarism.

We had to fight a four-decade cold war (with isolated "hot spots") to defeat the most destructive and murderous tyranny in world history (much to the regret of the Kumbahyah liberals).

And we have been in Iraq for how long? Three years? How many Americans have lost their lives there in the last three years?

One-third of that number were killed in three days on Betio in Tarawa atoll.

After three years in Iraq, the total of our dead has not even reached the number of those who died on Iwo Jima in six weeks.

How about compared to our own civil war? Well, look at that. Not even close, and we are rapidly approaching the same elapsed time.

What is the connection?

First, that fact that lasting good can be brought about by war, and war is often necessary to change the world for the better, in spite of what Kumbahyah Liberals may scream to the contrary. Ignore them. History proves them to be liars.

Second, that in terms of the price we have paid thus far in this war for the progress made, we have gotten off comparatively cheaply. That's not to say that even one death or casualty is something to be shrugged off. It isn't. But in previous wars we've paid a helluva lot more for a helluva lot less of a return.

Is it still a mess? Oh, most certainly. But don't let the Kumbahyah crowd scream you into insensibility. They are wrong; all is not lost, Iraq is not a failure. Iraq wasn't a failure the last hundred times they swore that it was.

Were mistakes made? I think so. But it could have been a lot worse:

Nearly a thousand soldiers died in one night on Slapton Sands because Allied commanders failed to secure the landing rehearsal area from German E-boats. Never heard of Slapton Sands? That's because Allied (including American) military commanders swept it under the rug.

Are there parallels between the liberal Valhalla of Vietnam and the present conflict in Iraq? Some could be found. But not nearly to the scale and magnitude that Kumbahyah liberals want us to think. Forces are spread thin. Piecemeal commitments are made to counter the flow of men and material into the AO. That much is true. But Uncle Ho is dead, and unlike Vietnam, we will not allow the Kumbahayah liberals to cause the deaths of millions of innocent people as they did when they forced us to abandon Vietnam, causing the slaughter of ten million Southeast Asians. Thank you, Ted Kennedy.

"Kumbahyah, give peace a chance, f*** everybody but meeeeeeeee."

Now, I have been critical of Rumsfeld and Bush. Quite vehemently so, particularly with regard to the overall prosecution of our war on that nebulous enemy they call "terror". But I confess that I am not a commander; I am an amateur naval historian.

However, even amateur naval historians enjoy something of which Kumbahyah liberals and media hacks are pitifully bereft: a sense of proportion and perspective. That's why liberals and the media take an incident of sectarian violence and start screaming "Civil war! Civil war!" like Chicken Little running around screaming, "The sky is falling!"

The only authority with which I can speak on the matter is as one having studied in quite exhaustive depth about the countless transactions that civilized nations have made where the commodity is freedom and meaningful peace, and the currency is always, always, always the blood of a free nation's best and brightest youth.

And in my studies, I began to discern a unalterable pattern that was there all along, if only I was careful not to avoid its truth: that in every instance when the civilized world determined that the advancement and defense of freedom was necessary whatever the cost, the world gained immeasurably from the endeavor, and in looking back, though the cost was frightfully high, found that the change was worth every precious drop of blood.

And nations that shrank back from the task were invariably swallowed up in the maw of hideous and bloodthirsty tyranny or swept away into the dustbin of history.

"Kumbahyah, give peace a chance, F*** BusHitler..."

Civil war in Iraq may not be avoidable. But it need not be the end of the road for freedom that the media and the liberals so fervently wish it to be for the sake of nothing more than their twisted satisfaction in watching a nascent democracy perish.

Kumbahyah.