Jul

10

I sat there talking to a teacher friend about the dangers of the Iraq War. “It is terrible,” she said, “that we have so many of our young people who have lost their arms and legs, not to mention the thousands who have been killed there.” Then she said the popularly rising refrain: “I just wish that Bush would get us out of there and just let them all kill each other off if they want to!”

Ruins at Bull Run - US Civil WarMeditating on what she said, I thought about America’s past. I reflected on the disasters we have suffered in previous wars. What would have happened if we had quit after losing a significant number of GIs. Come with me for a short look at some of our great losses.

Following Abraham Lincoln’s election, several southern states seceded from the union. Lincoln would not allow the union to become severed. In response, he amassed the Army of the Potomac and met the rebels in a place called Bull Run. In that bloody battle, the rebels defeated the Union Army. Like today’s followers of war, the people had cheered as the army went off to war and, after the defeat, blamed Lincoln for starting a war when he had no concept of the disastrous result.

Many demanded that Lincoln withdraw the Union army and just let the southern states go. But Lincoln refused to succumb to such logic because he deemed it faulty. Praise the Lord that God placed into leadership someone who could forebear and go forward with what must be done.

Bull Run, by the way, was repeated with the same results. Furthermore, that was followed by even more prophets of doom who characterized Lincoln as a buffoon with no leadership or concern for the poor soldiers being dismembered on the battlefield.

Normandy WWII D-DayDo you remember June 6, 1944? Most who do are from that Great Generation and the rest of us had to learn about it in history classes. Most of us remember learning about the daring victory on the beaches of Normandy. Few people remember that 2,300 Americans were killed in that single assault with thousands more wounded and maimed for life. My teacher friend was around during that time but has apparently forgotten. Following her logic, we should have quit and brought all the American GIs home after D-Day and let those Europeans go ahead and just kill each other if they so wanted.

But we didn’t. We took the beach, then stormed through France and the lowlands of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Then, as our surge was taking fruit, the enemy came back at us in the Ardennes Forest. My Uncle, 1Lt. Virgil H. Rothra, died in the Battle of the Bulge. He was one of thousands who died in that desperate counterattack by the Germans. Perhaps we should have said at that point, “We got Western Europe free from the Germans; it’s time to go home before any more Americans get hurt.”

President Bush led us after we were attacked. I know, Iraq never attacked us. I have heard that refrain, too. Germany never attacked us, but we took on that part of World War II before we went fully after the Japanese who did attack us.

Just as in the 1940s, we are in a global war. It is not a bumper sticker, as John Edwards has jibed, but a war! It is not a frontal war like those we fought across the fields of France, but an urban war such as those we fought door-to-door through the streets of western Germany.

Just as the Germans struck back in desperate counterattacks when they were on the verge of defeat, the Islamo-fascist radicals are seeing their impending defeat at the hands of the Bush-ordered surge and are fighting back in whatever ways they can.

Their terrorist attacks have fueled the largest surge of enlistments in the Iraqi army that we have seen yet. The Iraqi people are seeing results from the surge, and want to be rid of the secular violence inspired by the terrorists. Bush could be frightened off, just as Lincoln was advised to be by so many great leaders. But he won’t be, just as Lincoln wasn’t… and for the same reason: the cost of defeat is not acceptable; especially when victory is at hand.

Some Republicans, like my teacher friend, have joined the Democratic chorus of doom and withdrawal. Write to the ones in the Senate—John Warner (R-VA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Richard Lugar (R-IN), et al—and tell them to learn from history. Tell them to back the man with the vision for what is right. You might even send them this article.