Write2Right

The First Lesson of War

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.

One of the most clever strategies in prosecuting war against an intractable enemy is for the aggressor to cloak his actions so that the enemy is not aware that he is at war at all. The result is that deaths and destructions are viewed by the enemy as matters of serendipity, inadvertence, accident, happenstance, miscalculation. How can this happen? How can a nation or a people not know that it is being attacked by an aggressing, devilish enemy. It’s quite simple really. The aggressor relies upon that group within the enemy nation which denies the reality of the events surrounding them, and is all to ready to blame everybody but the aggressor for the current misfortune of the nation. And why does this group deny the reality? That also is quite simple. To accept the fact that the nation is at war, that the nation may be irrevocably destroyed, that sacrifices beyond imagination will have to made, that loved ones may die horrible deaths and that all that is near and dear may exist no longer are facts beyond which the group can accept. If the group is large enough, defeat is immanent.

Examples of this phenomenon run rampant throughout history: The English in response to William the Conqueror; During the American Rebellion against Britain nearly two thirds of the colonials refused to join the Revolutionary Army; The vast majority of American Indians were thoroughly unaware of the imperialist intentions of the white man on this continent; France at the beginning of World War II; European Jews in the late 1930's and right up into the end of World War II when the victors and survivors began to count the millions of missing Jews throughout Europe the Jewish leadership in Europe, at least what was left of it, finally got the idea. The examples are many. In most cases the results are predictable.

And today large numbers of Americans who have yet to grasp the fact that we are at war with an army of Muslims, having been trained and outfitted as an army in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the Philippine Islands, Indonesia, Kashmir, Pakistan, Chechenya, Bosnia. The soldiers of this army have all been indoctrinated with the same and sufficient idealism to accept momentary defeats, accept death and expect victory. No matter where trained and no matter what language they speak they all share the same religion and all have been trained to kill with the same identical handbooks, tactics and weapons. And finally every soldier among them knows who the enemy is, the United States of America and every one of its people including the Muslims that live among us, if need be. And I ask are there Americans who don’t believe this? You bet! They are ones who voted for John Kerry in the last Presidential election.

The next question is, what will it take to convince this large number of Americans that we are at war? And by the time that happens will it be too late? For the colonial Americans providential luck triumphed. For the Jews of Europe, it didn’t. There are no rules, only time and luck prevails. The last election in the United States showed we are a nation divided. One half this nation knows the enemy, senses its evil and wants desperately to fight this war and prepare for its defense. The other half is oblivious, obstructs every attempt to strike back, refuses to make the necessary sacrifices to defend ourselves at home and is unwilling to unleash the massive military power of this nation for the purpose of bringing the enemy to its knees, and keeps itself ignorant of the tragedy that may await us if we do not act quickly and decisively.

"I have no word of encouragement to give!...[T]he people have not yet made up their minds that we are at war with the South. They have not buckled down to the determination to fight this war through; for they have got the idea into their heads that we are going to get out of this fix somehow by strategy!....General McClellan thinks he is going to whip the rebels by strategy; and the army has got the same notion....The people have not yet made up their minds we at war I tell you! They think there is royal road to peace, and that General McClellan is to find it. The army has not settled down into the conviction that we are in a terrible war that has got to be fought out–no; and the officers have not either."

Abraham Lincoln, 1862

The War Between the States ended with 650,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of young men who survived without arms, legs or brains. On September 11, 2001 we experienced 3,000 casualties within less than 2 hours. How many more casualties in this country, on this hallowed ground will it take to convince those who "have not yet made up their minds that we are at war..." before they believe otherwise?

The Country Lawyer

The Imperial Army

This Battle for Iraq is driving the hard left to drink. They just can’t get it and it’s killing them. Here they have a President who they believe can’t tie his shoelaces who, without much help from the rest of world, sets his army off to a vast, hot, dangerous, and yes, evil country, for reasons he himself can’t quite articulate, and the American people support him overwhelmingly and almost without reservation. And to top it all off he directs the Attorney General to lock up and throw the key away with respect to those who are captured or detained or under suspicion that they may do harm to our people, or our cities or other national targets, and again the American people remain generally silent, unwilling to protest what is pretty much a violation of the constitution. The hard left and their fellow travelers just can’t get their minds around this and its cause for concern among the cognoscenti. The problem is what they are failing to grasp is the exceptional nature of the American experiment.

From the very beginning of our brief history the American people understood that they were participating in an experiment that had never been tried before...the establishment of a government to protect the individual freedom of those that lived within its borders. Note, I did not say citizens. Quite a simple concept, but one that turned on its head the general philosophy that existed at the time, namely, the purpose of people was to establish and then protect government from other governments. The theory being that ultimately people would find their protection within a government which had few or no constraints. We know today this philosophy never quite worked and inevitably results in tyranny. The fact that our descendants knew this then is quite remarkable since their education wasn’t very much better than the general population of other European countries at that time.

What is so surprising is that those white propertied males, who made up the citizenry of the early American Republic were able, over time, to convince a much larger group of citizens, made of females, blacks, Hispanics and a general assortment of other ethnics, races and cultures that the theory is one which should be supported and defended, even with blood, if necessary. But what seems to be unusual about the Battle for Iraq is that this is probably the first time in American history that there is a general consensus among the population that it is better to fight the enemies of freedom somewhere else rather than at home and to start that fight first without waiting for the enemy to arrive here. What obviously drives this belief is the attack of the homeland on 9/11. And this is what the hard left can’t seem to absorb. They refer to Vietnam. But no one is listening. They refer to the "gestapo tactics" of Attorney General Ashcroft. But no one is listening. They get hysterical about the random killings of our troops in Iraq. The American people are disturbed, angry, frustrated and definitely saddened by the deaths of these soldiers, each one a prize of prizes among the citizenry. But there is no talk of retreat. The streets are empty of protesters. And what makes it even worse for the hard left, perhaps for the first time since they became a force of opinion in the country, is that the American people smell, among them, a rat. The American people sense that there is a strong element of anti-Americanism, an anti-exceptionalism among the hard left. And if this true, this is probably the biggest reason for their unwillingness to be too convinced by the arguments of the hard left among us.

The hard left accuses America and its army of imperialism. The American public seems to agree and just doesn’t give a damn.

The Country Lawyer

Pat Tillman and the Irrelevant Elite

When I recently learned of Pat Tillman's death in combat I thought of the words from Shakespeare's King Henry the V in which King Henry responds to Westmoreland's concern that the French have more soldiers on the field than the English,

"The fewer men, the greater share of honour."

But King Henry goes on to explain,

"By Jove, I am not covetous for gold;
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour;
Than I am the most offending soul alive."

Pat Tillman was a man who coveted honor; a man with a keen sense of right and wrong who directed his life to things in which he passionately believed. We all know that he turned down a $3.6 million dollar contract to play defensive back for the Cardinals. But do we know he graduated from Arizona State University summa cum laude? Here is a man who could have picked any future, any career. With his good looks and strong body he could have directed his life to any pleasure, carnal or otherwise. He chose honor.

When I think of Pat Tillman I cannot help but think of the many privileged children in this country, privileged in family, in schools, in contacts, in money who direct their lives to covet even more gold. To them Pat Tillman and those like him are foolish idealists. To them the thought of relinquishing gold for honor is downright stupid. They are supported in this by their families who have struggled to make sure their children attend, not Arizona State or some other "directional school", but Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, Michigan (University not State) Cornell. The thought of their children seeking "honor" after all that work and investment would be addressed with great disappointment. But, to seek honor by joining the armed forces, that is considered something which reflects a mental instability, irrational, something that has to be cured with no less than a psychiatric palliative, a failure in values, a distinct rejection of everything in which they believe. The very thought that their child would, after all the right education, the right grooming, the right everything, join the armed forces to defend America, is considered a distinct failure in their responsibility as parents. And this in today's world, especially during America's confrontation with terrorism, is what makes them and their children irrelevant.

Prior to the Vietnam War it was seen as a duty by the elite and privileged families of America to send their children to West Point, Annapolis, ROTC, the Airforce Academy. They believed, and correctly, that they owed something back for the blessings they received from being Americans. They imbued their children with this belief and their children absorbed this and committed themselves to this value. They didn't necessarily make the military their career but they served and served with honor.

Today America relies for its defense not upon its elite and privileged families but rather upon its middle and less affluent classes. Today's young officers come from the state universities which have thrived and grown over the last 50 years throughout America. The tuition at these schools are a third of what the elite schools charge. The big and prestigious jobs don't go to these children of the heartland. But we look to them to man the barricades for our defense. You can see them in the evening on TV when Fox News or CNN reporters jam a microphone toward there eager faces, black, white, Hispanic and out pours a surprisingly articulate explanation of whatever is happening behind them on the field of battle. We know who they are. They are the children of the gardener, the bus driver, the police officer, the secretary, the Fed Ex guy or girl, the person behind the counter, the computer technician. We meet them everyday as we go about our business. These are not the children of the lawyers at the big firms, or the investment bankers, the marketing v.p.'s, the executives at some big TV network station.

The "old money" and newly affluent families have turned their backs to America. They have received the rewards of our freedom but reject the responsibility that comes with it. I am reminded of another time in our history when the country was fighting for its life. Lincoln allowed the privileged families to buy their children out of the Civil War for a mere $300. Today, when our freedom, and our very existence is challenged the elite and privileged families don't even have to do that. Among themselves they denigrate these soldiers as ones who don't know how to get themselves out of the rain. While their children are moving up the affluent ladder of success other children are fighting and dying.

But when its over these children will be coming back. Victory will be sweet in their mouths but a deep sadness will be in their hearts for those who did not return. That taste of victory and hollow sadness will be shared by all those American families whose children went abroad to defend us. And what of those who stayed behind and made themselves still richer? Again my mind goes to King Henry's words,

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurst they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon [this] day."

In other words, of those who stayed behind and made themselves still richer? Irrelevant.

God bless you Pat Tillman and God bless all the other Pat Tillmans who fought for us upon this day.

The Country Lawyer