We've featured Victor Davis Hanson here before.
Read this piece and be proud of your soldiers.
It seems just as true that the military has somehow distilled from the rest of us Americans an elite cohort with the most direct ties to the old breed of the sort who fought at Okinawa, rolled with Patton, and reconstituted Japan. Such soldiers somehow remain oblivious to unfounded criticism, confident in their own prowess, and convinced that their nation and its military are clear forces for good.
Because of such men and women, and despite so many other forces beyond their control, Iraq will not be lost to gangs and criminals, much less to Baathists, pan-Arabists, and Islamicists, who are not so much fueled by ideology as the desire for power and its accompanying material benefits for a tiny few.
We are reaching a great tipping point in Iraq, where the American soldier seeks to impose security and implant freedom faster than former Baathists try to erode it. The Iraqi Street we see so often on the sidelines is watching the struggle, unsure whether to re-hang their pictures of Saddam Hussein now ensconced beneath their sofas or to come forward and join the great experiment with freedom and consensual government.
And through it all the American soldier is asked to do what no others could do — and yet does so with grace under fire. On July 4th we should remember all this and the rare breed who, thank God, are on our side.
No comments:
Post a Comment