Email Doodlings - The wars may be ending, but will this wrong headed perception? - Granite Grok

Email Doodlings – The wars may be ending, but will this wrong headed perception?

Obama has unilaterally ended the Iraq war (hmmm, didn’t he rail against that “Cowboy Unilateralist” Bush for making decisions on his own?) and is on his way in doing the same in Afghanistan.  And while I had some words about it here, this is not the thrust of this post.  Instead, it is this:

Neo-cons have no problem sacrificing their own children to the war machine. That sounds harsh, but it’s the truth

It brought back a memory of something very similar – it ignited my ire by effective saying the same thing:

Finally, if you believe in this mission, whatever it really is, are you willing to die or send your children to die for it?

This time, it started off with a discussion back aways about Sarah Palin getting into the Primary race but quickly morphed from that to this and I never expected to hear that from a non-Liberal friend.  In essence, the far Left and the far Right / Libertarian movement have met and in a very ugly fashion in accusing parents of willingly sending their kids to die for an ideology.  This is wrong at several different levels and to be clear, made my blood pressure rise – so I started to answer:

I consider you a friend and ” in arms” in the fight for Liberty  – but this needs a strong rebuke; I refused, long ago, to take that from a flaming liberal, and I refuse to take that from anyone else, friend or not.  NO CARING PERSON WILLINGLY sends their children to war. To believe and say otherwise is disgusting.  Both of my sons VOLUNTEERED to serve their country on their own and of their own free will.

I am no NEO-con; just a plain Conservative, but the implication that I, or anyone else, callously sends their children off to perhaps come back wounded or in a casket, is just plain wrongheadedness.  That effectively puts me into a class of person that has no regards for their children at all.  Essentially, akin to those like the Casey Anthony case where the Mom killed her baby so she could “have her life back”, you have issued a charge that has me looking pretty cross right about now (as opposed to my normal cross-eyed, dufus look).

Methinks you need to noodle upon your words a bit and perhaps restate them a tad; while I am proud of my sons’ service, I had NO thoughts of blithely sacrificing either of them “to the war machine”.  Further thoughts here: my rebuttal to that flaming liberal who accused many of the same thing; that Letter was my first foray into activating into politics.  Karen Barker made the same insinuation then as you have now;   I continue to refuse to allow the same charge to stand now:   Three Questions Posed and Answered

Your words speak specifically to someone calling out a parent’s outlook on their own children; it assumes that actual children are viewed by this political class’s parents as mere pawns to the parent’s will and ideology.  It is saying that a parent is absolutely willing to impose their subjugation on the physical, spiritual, and emotional well being of a grown adult offspring merely to satisfy the political will of the parent – and that is all that I read into it or with which I took issue.

If one loves their children, they do not “sacrifice” them for anything regardless of political viewpoint  – instead, they protect them against any and all problems that come their way (foraying into over-sheltering, spoiling, or acting as helicopter parents are topics for a different time).  This is an assertion that asks for actual proof of an instance – or a mea culpa of “oops, passion got the better of me, my bad” (having been there, done that myself).

To what you raised: actually, the military was never much discussed as they were growing up as I did not come from a military family or background – but I never denigrated or put down military service either; any discussions were always respectfully done (I never served, fwiw).  Sure, bad things happen during war time – sometimes because the inner barbarian comes out or because someone thinks they can get away with something.  Discussion on either of those two bookends (or something in between), however, is a distraction from the  original line.  The issue of Patriotism is not the issue here: yes, America has made mistakes just as any other country has if one goes back far enough or looks hard enough, and yes (for completeness sake), people dying for ANY wrong reason (military or otherwise) results in sadness.

We can debate Iraq for a long time and the history of this particular conflict (UN resolutions, sponsored terrorism, national interest, and the like)- but not now and not here (my fingers would be just nubs and I have other uses for them later on in the day).

With Afghanistan, while it was not a pre-emptive strike, we did overthrow the Taliban (a theocracy like Iran) as they continued to offer safe harbor to those that had attacked us.

All of this is tied up in the Western notion of what is war and what is a Just War.  Problem is, as pointed out, we are engaged in a clash of Civilizations: the West vs Islam.  Further, it is being waged in manners that the traditional Western view of warfare is not well equipped to win.  One way to think about it is to pit a Marquis of Queensbury boxer against an MMA fighter.  Different rules – how can the fight be Just?

And that translates from the ring (or Octagon) to the real world as well.  As we discussed with Erik Stakelbeck on GrokTALK! this morning (his new book: the Terrorist Next Door), we are being engaged in an asymmetrical war not only on the military plane, but on a cultural, religious, and legalfare basis as well.  Doubt me?  Go try preaching the Gospels during an Islamic event in Dearborn, MI and see how far you get claiming free speech and free expression of religion.  And look what happened when the 5 imams were taken off the plane – all the Joe and Jane Does were threatened with legal action with the throw away line of “hey, if they are innocent, the trial will determine that”  knowing full well that they could use our legal system to intimidate many to silence due to the sheer financial and time cost to defend themselves).

But in giving support for a war, they kind of are sending their children

No, that is a very weak argument.  And frankly, I see no merit in it at all (again, returning to your original line)

It takes a lot to convince the people of a democratic republic to go to war, and the process takes a long time

How do we continue to protect our nation in this day and age of the commoditization of weapons of mass destruction that can originate from other countries and kill from 10s to 1,000s or more?  I believe that sometimes, a pre-emptive strike may be necessary and prudent so as to save American lives.

a discussion like this would be completely unavoidable if the people’s representatives made the decision to go to war, as is required by the Constitution

On a BRIGHTER note, I do agree with this.  The problem is that our Founders system was created to slow down decision making – some decisions need to be made rapidly depending on the threat or become irrelevant (e.g., missile strikes).  On the other hand, we can have Presidents actively flaunt current law, as Obama is with the War Powers Act in Libya (if you believe it to be constitutional) and without a Constitutional declaration of war (if you don’t).

A situation arises for our troops to liberate the people of Tibet from Chinese oppression (to choose a random example).

No, I am in total disagreement with the Samatha Powers “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine that Obama is using – you can see it’s incremental failure there already and its total failure in Syria (where more have been murdered than in Iraq).  In both cases, we have not been attacked and we have no national interest at risk (as opposed to Iraq, where this whole mess started with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq with [at the time] what seemed to be an imminent incursion into Saudi Arabia – and our national interest was oil and that a dictator would have had control over much of the world’s supply).  Your example, Tibet, would be a perfect validation of how wrong that R2P doctrine is.

OK, I’ll say it “The Constitution is not a suicide pact”, along with “do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.  War IS Savagery, plain and simple.  There is no way to sugar coat it – there ARE no rules except what are placed by us upon ourselves.  And when those rules are used against us, they should be tossed for a brief time, kill the bad guys by whatever means necessary, and THEN, go back to the way we were in following our own rules.

After all, look at our Revolutionary War, where we often refused to fight in the old style European style of “line’em up, march across the field, shoot’em in the line”.  I do believe in Patton’s maxim: Your duty is not to die for your country but to make that other son of a bitch die for his“.

Thus, we do NOT fundamentally change our values and character, but we may have to put them aside temporarily to make a problem (the bad guys) irrelevant.  And for those that refuse to have it “temporary”, severe penalties.

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