The Senescent Man

In case anyone out there does not believe we're in a world war against an islamo-fascist piracy, read this.

Last night I happened to be watching PBS, and Walter Cronkite was relating how the news correspondents during the war on England by Germany in World War II affected the views of Americans.

In early 1941, 2/3 of Americans did not want any part of the war with Germany.  Just prior to Pearl Harbor, at the end of the same year, again PRIOR to the bombing by the Japanese, the opinion polls flipped, and 2/3 of Americans thought it inevitable that we would need to fight.

Well, American opinion on Iraq is similar today, and it is being driven by the news from correspondents.  In one day, England would lose 3,000 people to V1 and V2 unmanned buzz bombs, and we would wonder what to do.  Today, after four years in Iraq, and having lost over 3,000 of our own wonderful young men, we want out. 

Understandably, we think if we were to just walk away, our young men will be spared. Or at least we wish it.

The enemy is not those who keep us in this war, it is those who have driven us to this war.  The real enemy are those who perpetrated the killing of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11.  They are not a contiguous nation like Germany but a spread out piracy that stretches the globe.

Winston Churchill, and later FDR, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor said that "this will be a long, drawn out war..."  People forget, but George W. Bush said the same.  We have no patience for war.  We hate it when the innocent die, and the slog goes on, but Walter Cronkite kept referring to the "patience" and "endurance" of the British during the early years of World War II.

Do we have the same grace under fire?  Can we tough it out and extinguish this pestilence?

Though the correspondents tell us of every injury and every death as if it occurred in our back yards, we nonetheless have the enemy on the run right now.  Do we withdraw?

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 11:12 AM