Civil War Thinking

From: Mike Bullard [mailto:mikeb43@charter.net]

Received this from a friend and the father hits the nail on the head. During the 40s she would have been run out of the US and the threat now is greater than then. We won that one because we stood united. When the politicians are through with her she will be left to die on the vine by herself and they won't be mentioned.

"An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan From the Proud Father of a U.S. Marine
By Brantley Smith
Posted On August 17, 2005"

NOTE: Mr Smith's letter is not presented here because of copyrights and permission. Please find his letter and read it.

I wish it did. It doesn't. Like Ms. Sheehan, it hits to one side of the nail. It is two people with very opposite positions about the way of American foreign policy and the cost of not correcting mistakes quickly before losses mount higher. Brother, I do read a lot and not just the Bible or the Constitution, but history, philosophy, religion, analyses from foreign policy experts and so on. They may know more than me or you, or maybe not. So this is just another whack at the American nail.

Our fight is not with the Muslims; it is with sects. These are the people who attack us; not the world of Islam. Unless we wish for this. If we do, it will come true.

Here's the deal with the Muslims: Islam is a religion of peace. The law of Sharia about occupiers on their land is the man who owns it must fight, if he cannot his neighbor must, and if not he, his neighbor to the extent of the whole of the Muslim faith.

That means eventually, we will have to fight them all if we do not leave the lands of the Middle East when asked by the people of those lands. Who we fight about over that will depend on who welcomes us and who does not. Oil doesn't matter; religion does. We invaded and like VietNam, we will face an insurgency that will only grow stronger. When we leave, a Civil War will occur whether we provide cover or not if this is the will of the people of Iraq. Today, they fight us because we are there. Whatever we think we are achieving, we are not stopping the insurgency. We are prolonging it just as we prolonged the Civil War in VietNam by taking a side after the French failed to hold their colonies in SouthEast Asia.

Whether Cindy Sheehan is right to protest the loss of her son in a war we should not have started, or whether this man truly believes the sacrifice of his daughter will somehow make him safer, Iraq did not start a war with the United States. We did.

We violated the one tenet most Americans share: we would not strike first. We say we did this out of fear of Weapons of Mass Destruction when America possesses the
greatest stock of such in history. If it really is our intention to liberate, then we have done that. If it really is our intent to turn Iraq into the war where all terrorists come to learn how to fight us, we have done that too. If it is our intent to leave in peace and enable the people of the region to choose as freely their lives as we do here, then we must leave.

If our intent is other than that, then we must ask ourselves if we do as Americans share such cause. If all that sends us there is fear, then we are a dishonored nation before the world for we of all peoples have learned by history and experience the costs of stocks in the village square, or sending our children into harms way to satisfy the craft of craven leaders.

Bodies. Ours. Theirs.

At the end of this when we do withdraw as we eventually will, those costs are not unnoticed or dishonored. The children and men who go to die as professional soldiers
will have as they always have when called, fight selflessly for each other and for whatever else they value.

It is Their fight. Not mine. Not yours. Not Cindy's. Not Mr. Smith's.

When they come home, they will tell us if it was worth it, but they will come home, to say or be buried. That is war.