Posted on 01/07/2014 6:14:28 AM PST by shortstop
I have a friend who fought in Fallujah.
He is boisterous and confident and full of life. He has the can-do spirit that defines himself and all who have worn the blue cord of the Army Infantry.
But yesterday he was broken.
As he talked about the Iraq war, and specifically the fight for Fallujah, there was a sadness that doesn’t come out in the speeches and books. There wasn’t the never-say-die confidence of a veteran non-commissioned officer, there was instead the dazed uncertainty of a man who looks back and wonders what the hell it was all about.
Why did he face death, why did he inflict death, why did he and his buddies bleed and die on that Godforsaken soil for it all to come to this.
To this?
To an al Qaida win.
Last week Fallujah fell to al Qaida. This generation’s Normandy now flies the Nazi flag. The most intense urban fighting the world has seen since World War II has ended up with the good guys gone and the bad guys triumphant.
Our Iraq transition plan boiled down to us out and al Qaida in. In the political vilification of the president who launched a war our nation and its leaders have disavowed the war itself and, consequently, the men who fought it.
And the prizes they claimed.So the al Qaida flag flies. The Syrian rebels Washington wanted to arm slunk across the border and, their jihadist passions embroiled, sought to defecate on the American legacy by claiming our bloodiest prize.
And my friend wonders what the hell it was all about. He has come to taste the bitterness of the Vietnam veteran, in which the shifting sands of public opinion have turned his days of glory and sacrifice into an expedition of waste and shame.
Iraq is shattered, we have gained nothing, and enemy boots now trod soil bought with American blood.
That’s how it looks.
But that’s not how it is.
That’s not how it is at all.
Because the Iraq war was a resounding win, and every effort there – every life lost there – directly protected the safety and freedom of the American homeland.
America must never forget that, and America’s veterans must never forget that.
The war in Iraq was a diverting effort, a changing of the venue in the war with terror, it was to this war what the Italian campaign was to the Second World War.
Let’s review.
America’s awareness of extremist Islam’s war against Christians, Jews and democracy began on September 11, 2001. Some 3,000 defenseless civilians were killed by that war in the American homeland that day.Extremist Islam had declared the war and chosen the battlefield and the combatants. Their fanatic savages against our wives and mothers, stewardesses and office workers, in our country and on our planes.
That was their choice.
That’s where they wanted to fight.
They wanted to slaughter our unarmed families in our homeland.
And we didn’t stand for that.
We hit them with the left and we hit them with the right. We quickly took down their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, and then we chose a diversionary fight to attract the scum of the Muslim pond – the steady crop of jihadists – and destroy them.
To be blunt, we needed to bleed them down, to draw them into a fight and etrit them. We needed a grinder for the enemy’s passion, and Iraq was that grinder.
They wanted to fight unarmed civilians in America, we got them to fight our trained soldiers in Iraq. We changed the target of their ire – from mothers to Marines – and we changed the battlefield – from our home to theirs.
And we stacked them up like cordwood.
And we called it the Iraq war, though it really had nothing to do with Iraq. Yes, there was talk about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein, and maybe leaders actually did think those things were important. But the guiding hand of Providence, which has stood around the American campfire from the days of Valley Forge, had another agenda.
It was a strategy of diversion, to misdirect and blunt the jihadist hate, in order to achieve an overriding objective – to secure and protect America.
My friend and his comrades did not fight and die for Fallujah, they fought and died for America. It wasn’t about that soil, it was about this soil. And it was not a loss, it was a win.
Yes, the al Qaida flag flies over Fallujah today, but it does not fly over America.
There was a mission, it was accomplished. And though there may be a new mission today, and tomorrow, it does not diminish or negate the mission of yesterday.
The purpose of the Iraq war was to keep them busy, to draw them away from our families and homes, to let them bleed into their own soil instead of into ours. The verdict of the Iraq war is not what happens today in Iraq, it’s what happens today – and over the last decade – in America.
We won. The Iraq conflict was noble, purposeful and successful.
And the Iraq veteran is an American hero. He bought us a decade of American security, and his successors are buying another decade today.
It’s worth noting that under that schema, there was a zero-th Iraq war with the Iranians that was fought to a draw with almost WWI casualty levels among the military forces involved.
Just to keep everyone aware of the applicable modern history.
Patience is the answer.
Lets see if the Iraqi government forces can take out the trash in Fallujah, like the US military did.
The pinnacle of muslim “civilization” is barbarism and the few places where civilization actually exist in the mideast are little more than a facade to attract western dollars.
For a miniscule fraction of the cost in blood and money we could actually protect our own country and let the middle eastern strongmen have their little kingdoms of sand.
Question for debate: Resolved, the country would have been better off if Bush had done absolutely nothing after 911, instead of the course he actually took.
I see no difference between your comment and the view of the ultra-left and Obama.
We shouldn’t have even gone in in 1991. Don’t get involved in intra-Arab/intra-Muslim squabbles.
and their accomplices in the media.
God, how I hate them!
It is Traitorobama's defeat and the defeat of the 66 million fellow traitors who voted for him. They should be mocked and ridiculed until the day they are tried, convicted, and sentenced for giving aid and comfort to the enemy... or they go to hell, whichever comes first.
Anyone notice that little Shi’ite Muqtada al-Sadr, who lived for giving our effort fits, seems rather silent these days? I guess he’ll remain so unless al-Qaeda decides to take his sector of Baghdad.
“Born down in a dead mans town.
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
‘Til you spend half your life just a covering up
Like a dog that’s been beat too much.
Born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
Had a brother who was at Khe Sanh
Fighting the North and the Viet Cong.
They’re still there.
He’s all gone.
Born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
Went back to the refinery.
The man said, ‘Son, if it was up to me’.
Went down to see my VA man.
He said, ‘Son, don’t you understand?’
Born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
I was born in the USA!
I’m a long-gone Daddy in the USA.”
“I see no difference between your comment and the view of the ultra-left and Obama.”
Oh really? Then why are we still there and why did it take Obama all this time to pull out? Remember that it was a leftist (JFK and Johnson) that got us into Vietnam and it was a leftist (Bush, and if you don’t think that he’s a leftist then tell me why his legacy was increasing taxes and social spending?) that started this war on terror. Leftist love wars like this as it gives them every excuse they need to tax the hell out of us and build up government controls and the police state. Open your eyes.
With a heartfelt thank you to our great military for their tremendous sacrifices in life and limb, I just can't find it in me to support and perpetuate the political lie that we achieved a resounding win nor that every life lost there – directly protected the safety and freedom of the American homeland.
One of our local female National Guardsmen returned from Afghanistan this fall. She acted as some sort of liaison to women in Afghanistan.
She says screw the women of Afghanistan. She found them to be just as bad and in many cases even worse than the men. She said they talked friendly to her face than immediately ran to the taliban with intelligence about the infidels and their whores. She said those wonderful mothers knowingly send their children into heavily mined areas while standing at the sidelines.
” Leftist love wars like this as it gives them every excuse they need to tax the hell out of us and build up government controls and the police state.”
Why then did Obama, as you put it, pull out?
You sound just like the leftists. They say right-wingers, you say leftists, but the thought process and ideals are the exact same.
It's all about perspective. Obama and the left see the exact same results, but reverse the polarity.
Obama appears determined to clear the military of these "subversives" one way or another, whether through throwing away hard-won victories in front of the eyes of loyal, battle-hardened veterans, pitching their absentee ballots into the trash, or through converting the entire structure into a jobs program for unemployed transgender theater majors who can manage at least one pull-up per week.
Should have just nuked the poppy fields.
Disagree. Things went wrong when we moved beyond the punitive expedition and into nation building.
caww made one of the best statements I’ve seen on Free Republic in months the other day:
“The major lesson of the Iraq war is our country and leadership cannot foresee the consequences of any war with the middle east countries with sufficient accuracy to be attempting to micromanage the geopolitics of those countries.”
I guess technically you might say the Iraq occupation, but you get the idea.
Dude, I spent 3 1/2 years there and travelled all over and can assure you our effort “directly protected the safety and freedom of the American homeland.”
Besides killing and helping Iraqis kill thousands of international jihadis (Syrians, Saudis, Sudanese, Yeminis, Albanians, Iranians, etc.) we, more importantly, held up American honor for the 9/11 attacks. To strike back when attacked is a very strong message in Islam.
Our efforts in Iraq will spare us innumerable attacks in the future and makes it clear to the world we sided with theh values of national self-determination and representative governance against Islamic terrorism -which is their antithesis. And we came to them and did it in their front yard. This will not be forgotten -except in the West.
The only solution this girl saw was one that no one will ever do. She said the only thing that would save Afghanistan is killing everyone over 10 years old and the 10 year olds are kind of iffy.
When she left she was all idealistic about saving the women of Afghanistan. Now she says, “I was an idiot”.
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