Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Today is Sunday, 27 May, 2007. It’s the weekend of Memorial Day.

Today I read an article by the Associated Press about the nearly 1,000 new graves that Americans have opened in the last year to bury servicemen who’ve died fighting in Iraq. It featured a photograph of a man, kneeling beside a pair of boots which represented his brother, a Marine lance corporal, in a memorial in a park in Oregon, I believe, where about 3,400 or so pairs of boots were displayed, each representing a man or woman in uniform killed in Iraq.

I couldn’t help wondering if such memorials are truly appropriate, and if the dead feel truly honored or appropriately mourned in these displays, or if their deaths are actually being exploited and trivialized to protest the war.

I believe the message should be "These are the honored dead, who fell in battle defending our country, defending each one of us, from those who would slaughter and enslave us."

But is that the message? Or is it "These are the poor, ignorant victims of George Bush’s War, a War of Lies which he has foisted on the American people; the price is too high, and America’s not worth fighting for, or dying for!"?

If the radical Islamist jihadists who make war on us and our civilization could get a message across to the American people, it would be that latter message–"The price is too high, it’s not worth it, it’s a war of lies, the war is lost, give up, withdraw your troops, redeploy, SURRENDER!".

Those who put on these displays, these so-called "memorials" are doing the work for the jihad that the jihadists can’t do for themselves. They are trivializing and mocking the deaths and sacrifice of all who have died or been wounded in the fight for our survival as a nation and a civilization.

This is not "an elective war" or "a war of choice". The Islamist extremists declared war (or "holy war" or "jihad" ) on America in 1979. We’ve been under attack for decades and we’ve gone along blindly ignoring it until the jihadists successfully brought their war to our shores on 11 September, 2001. Iraq is the central battle ground in this war. As long as we are fighting in Iraq, American civilians are not bleeding and dying in our streets here at home. Unless we prevail in Iraq, the jihad will follow our troops home and we will reap the whirlwind in such a way that 3,450 war dead will look like a paltry sum.

God bless all the wonderful young American men and women who are willing to put on the uniform and place themselves between us and those who would slaughter and enslave us. May God heal and comfort all who’ve been wounded and maimed in this horrible fight. And for all the thousands who’ve laid down their lives on our behalf, may God take them to his bosom and give them rest!