Point / Counterpoint on the American People and "War."

Someone just emailed me the following message.  Oddly enough, I strongly disagree but not for the reasons you may think.  Here is the message and here is my response.

I know everyone has a different opinion on the war and our current President, but this article makes a lot of sense.  Take two  minutes, read it and give it some thought...  

When electing the next President, the only decision you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in the White House when--not if --WHEN we get hit again, and millions of American lives are put at risk!

This is from: 'You ain't gonna like losing.'

                    Author unknown.

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism.  But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq.  Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII.    It is not.

Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.

And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today.  Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war.  But that did not matter.  The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.

Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort.  Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.

Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition, trying their best to join the military.

Women doubled their work to keep things going at home.  Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President.  Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale.  And a bunch even enlisted.

And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies.  A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio.  We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve..

It is not the same country.  It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz.  We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.

We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims.  They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.  It has been estimated that about one third, or over three hundred million, Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists' cause... Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.  So... We either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.

America is not at war. The military is at war.

America is at the mall, or watching movies.

I strongly disagree with this analysis.  My disagreement comes from a number of factors, from the nature of the "war" to the nature of the problem.

First of all, and most important, WWII was never about people.  WWII was clearly about leaders.  While prejudice may have colored our relations in the war in the Pacific, we had no such problems with the people of Germany.  We had, to some extent, learned the hard way about how gloating after WWI lead in part to WWII.  We agreed to help the enemy rebuild and they let us do so.  We invested a significant amount of resources to do so.

After 9/11 the people volunteered.  While they might not have been as eager to do so as those after Pearl Harbor they did so in large numbers.  More importantly, while the reasons for going into Iraq were based on false assumptions, the war was easily won.  We won the war, we lost the peace.  We lost the peace because of a number of factors.  Unlike WWII the oppressed people (the French) were not in any mood to stick it to their oppressors.  In addition the Rumsfeld policy of relocating the headquarters out of the way and going on the cheap was the exact opposite of the Marshal plan after WWII.  We were shooting ourselves in the foot by bad management and the American People have no tolerance for stupidity.  Rumsfeld had no license to be stupid and no excuse for almost loosing the peace.  Only the post Rumsfeld Surge saved us from total defeat.

We were fortunate in WWII, most of the American people never saw the stupid things our stupid generals did and the smart things our smart generals did won the day in spite of the stupid generals.  But not all wars were this way and one of our greatest American Presidents, and a war time one at that, Lincoln, was strongly against Polk's treatment of the Mexican American War.

We pulled some real blunders in this war.  Not even Vietnam had such extended tours of duty as those seen in Iraq.  The real blunders are yet to be seen; sweeping a lot of wounded vets under the rug and really short changing our veterans programs.  We pissed off the patriots, how do you expect the rest of the people to feel?

Yes that was then and this is now.  How many people quickly forget how short our involvement in WWII was after Pearl Harbor?  Do you think we would have continued to show the same support for WWII had it lasted into the 50's?  I doubt it. 

No sir, the American People are for square for our nation.  Unlike WWII, Bush never asked us to sacrifice.  Perhaps that will be what history will say decades from now.  Never the less, please don't trash the American People who got tired of a "no cost" con job who got convinced by his secretary that we could win this one on the cheap.  Sacrifice is one thing, but the American People will not grant anyone a license to be Stupid!

Thank God, neither Obama nor McCain are either stupid nor are they prone to listen to stupid people.  And God Bless America!