No End Save Victory
The Arizona Republic,
May 30, 2004 -
On this Memorial Day, it is more important than ever for us to remember the men and women who have fought for our country, and to honor those who are serving today on the frontlines of freedom, especially in Iraq. They must not fail. Our goal is to see Iraq governed with justice and peace by the Iraqis themselves. Our forces will not stay a moment longer than necessary to see that dream realized, but we must make sure that they do not leave a moment too soon. We can never forget that we are facing our enemies in Iraq in the hope that we never again face them here in the United States. The next attack may well be marked not just by the smoldering ruins of a few buildings, but by the suffering and devastation caused by chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison we have all seen recently were disgusting, but they do not take away from the importance or the justice of our mission in Iraq. If we needed a reminder of the savage brutality of our enemies, the grisly video of Nick Berg’s murder should serve to reinforce that this is a battle of modern civilization against medieval barbarism. Again and again in recent decades, we sent our soldiers to foreign lands, often on noble missions, only to bring them home at the first sign of trouble. Our enemies learned to think of this nation as fickle and weak. In the 1980s, a single truck bomb drove us from Beirut, where our Marines were trying to end a decade-long civil war. In the 1990s, we sent forces to Somalia to help feed a starving nation, but we withdrew after images of dead Americans soldiers appeared on the television news. The world was watching. Osama bin Laden said of Somalia in an August 2001 interview, “The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat." On the eve of the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein distributed copies of Black Hawk Down, a movie about the debacle in Somalia, to his troops to convince them that America would retreat in the face of casualties. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were events of singular horror, but they were also the culmination of a decade of Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Starting with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Al Qaeda struck at the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole in Yemen. Each attack pales in comparison to Sept. 11th, but our failure to respond effectively – our insistence on the law enforcement process, and our pinprick cruise missile strikes – made the United States look like a straw giant. Sept. 11 shattered our illusion of safety like waking from a dream. We realized that our enemies overseas can now kill Americans on our own soil. At the end of major combat operations, the United States had about 160,000 troops in Iraq. Today we have about 138,000. If we need more, more must be sent. The success of our effort depends on security, and American troops are the best security. We must ensure that the mission of establishing a free Iraq is complete before our soldiers come home. We cannot let political considerations determine how long our troops remain in Iraq. This is a test that America has failed too often in the past. If we succeed, a free and democratic Iraq will be a beacon of hope to the Middle East and the world. If we fail, the enemies of peace and progress will be emboldened, and more attacks - perhaps worse than Sept. 11th - will follow.
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