Today is Pearl Harbor Day. It is the anniversary of the beginning of the last war the United States actually tried to win.
I pity people with young children. I guess I'm lucky in that I won't be having any. Why, you ask? Because I won't have to answer the following question when they get older. "Daddy, why didn't we do something when we had a chance?" I have been to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on many occasions. In fact I am a member. To visit that place you cannot help but wonder why it had to come to this. There were warning signs, storm clouds on the horizon. But appeasement was the watchword. Diplomacy would solve everything. Evil didn't really exist. What followed were six years in which the world was plunged into a brutal war against fascist imperialism that cost the lives of millions upon millions of people. So here we are, more than three years after going into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein and establish a stable democracy that was to be an example to the rest of the Middle East. Have things gone well? It would seem that opinion on the matter has shifted. I guess the propagandists in the media and their puppeteers in the Islamic world have succeeded. After the Democrats stumbled into their win in the recent mid-term elections (thanks in no small part to the complete ineptitude of their Republican counterparts), it's all about how to get the hell out of Iraq. Success is not an option. The new Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates flatly stated that we are not winning the war. I'm sure that made certain groups very happy, most notably the American left, anti-American Europeans and Islamic fascists. The American left cannot wait to pull troops out of Iraq and declare a loss. After all, members of the U.S. military are nothing but torturers and murderers of the innocent people of the world. The anti-American in Europe salivate over the prospect of the United States of America being humiliated on the world stage. Never mind that we have been ensuring their security for almost a century. I don't have to expound on the reasons the Islamic fascists are happy. Their plan to play the American people like a fiddle through manipulation of our media has worked like a charm. They can see their goals coming to fruition. Complete control of the Middle East. The extermination of Israel. The continued creeping invasion and domination of Islam in Europe. Devastating attacks on the United States. Allah just loves it when a plan comes together.
How did we get here? We did not prosecute the war seriously. We attempted to fight vicious and brutal people who have no reservations about killing one group of civilians while hiding behind another by trying with great care not to harm any civilians. We did not destroy militia groups who continue to fight American and Iraqi troops. We did not shut down the borders of the country to keep out the bastards who are blowing up innocent Iraqis on a daily basis. It is true that we did win the war against Saddam Hussein and his forces. Mission accomplished. But winning the peace has proven more difficult. Now we find ourselves in the remarkable position where the idea of negotiation with Iran and Syria, two of the biggest terrorist sponsors in the region, is actually being taken seriously. Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are licking their chops like a couple of cats circling a crippled bird. Rather than confront these regimes, we seem to be foolishly trying to engage them diplomatically. All the while they send their killers into Iraq to destabilize the government and murder Iraqis. They have also seen the weakness of America and stand prepared to take full advantage. They will not be stopped now. Not by us anyway. And it seems that there is no other country in the world with will or ability to stand up to Islamic fascism. This is the turning point and all we can do is watch it happen.
So when they get older in the coming years you can tell your kids that this is how it all unfolded. Assuming you and they will still be alive to have that conversation.
And another thing...