September 22, 2005

The Duty to Support the Troops and Their Mission

There are things worse than losing a loved one in war, although that may be hard to imagine. Victory gives meaning to the death of a loved one. Their death becomes sacrifice when something noble is built out of the ashes of war.

The great tragedy that was Vietnam was that so many died. And for what? To see South Vietnam fall to a Stalinist dictatorship, hundreds of thousands rounded up for re-education, and the spread of communism (or worse) in Southeast Asia. The vanity of their deaths cannot be laid at the feet of the soldiers they fought with. No, we are to blame.

There is an unwritten pact between soldier and citizen in a democratic nation. The soldier puts his life at risk and the citizen supports the soldier and his mission and gives him whatever tools are necessary to win it. Whatever remains of what was once referred to as 'the glory of war' is still found in victory. The purpose of war is still to win.

When a democratic nation sends its sons and daughters to fight a war it must do so with a total commitment to victory. To reduce war to cost-beneift analysis is to reduce the life of a soldier to that of automaton: the soldier becomes a robot who's actions have no morality nor meaning. One cannot say we are willing to fight only so hard, or that we are willing only to lose X number of soldiers, but after that no more. What about the soldiers who have already been mamed and wounded? Is their sacrifice for nothing?

George Patton is quoted as saying that Americans cannot stand to lose a war. This is true, but not for the reasons attributed to him, that we just cannot stand a loser.

Although it is rarely articulated, Americans cannot stand to lose a war because we are a moral people. Our wars, all of them, are couched in moralistic terms. We fight for a reason. National interest may be reason enough for the French to fight (a much less rare occurrence than popular jokes would lead you to believe), but not for Americans. National interest may be an important part of all our wars, but interest alone is not enough. We fight for something good when we fight.

In war there is no substitute for victory, and in America victory gives meaning to the deaths of fallen sons and daughters. They died for something greater than themselves. They died for a purpose. That purpose is good.

This is why defeatism has always been considered only slightly less offensive than actual treason.

And this is also why the rhetoric of the Left is so disgusting. To ascribe the very worst motives to our wars and to our fellow citizens is to make the death of a son or daughter worse than meaningless. If one believes that war is about imperialism, financial gain, a Jewish conspiracy, or whatever, then those that die are not heroes. At best they are victims, at worse they are criminals.

Dying for a lost cause is vanity, dying for an evil cause is immoral.

This weekend there will be several rallies in the Washington, D.C., area in support of our troops and of their victory. I urge all Americans to come out in support of them. If liberals actually honor the troops, as they say they do, then it is their duty as a citizen to support their victory. The time to argue that the war should not be fought is long past, that decision was made through the democratic process.

Your side lost, now support our victory. Anything less would be to spit on the graves of the honored dead.