Who Do We Fight For?
Contributed by The Gray Dog
“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
Golda Meir, 1957, before the National Press Club in Washington.
Americans, like Israelis, go to war in the hope that our children and grandchildren will never have to. Sure we talk about freedom, liberty and the American way, but who do we chose to preserve such lofty ideals for, if not for those we cherish most. I have yet to meet a soldier who went to battle to preserve the honor of a hundred gray haired senators on Capitol Hill, or pulled a picture of his congressman from his pocket while crouching in a fox hole. Tip O’Neil said that “all politics is local.” I would say that all war is personal.
Certainly there are feelings of hatred, revenge, justice and patriotism that motivate us to fight. The swell of patriotism that followed Pearl Harbor and 9/11 evoked such feelings that, for a brief moment in time, it truly seemed we were one nation, with one mind and one heartbeat. And while those feelings are never lost, they gradually wane and find a way to coexist with a stronger devotion to our families and loved ones.
But, what of our enemies? It is a culture that holds women in contempt, their only purpose in life to bear the next generation of human sacrifices. Their children are not loved and protected. They are armed and indoctrinated in hate. Our enemies seek to gain nothing more than the denial of the right of others to exist freely. They seek to preserve nothing, since they train their children to become suicide bombers and martyrs. They seek to defend nothing by concealing themselves behind all that is worthy of defense.
Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda have twisted the meaning of mutually assured destruction. MAD was a Cold War policy hopeful that stalemate would preserve stability. The Islamic-fascists see it as a viable strategy. In victory or in defeat our enemies will eventually self-destruct. Why shouldn’t we hasten their destiny? If we don’t, what have we preserved for our children?
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