Posted by
Soldier Dad on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 2:56:37 PM
During the four years of the Civil War, over 200,000 Americans were killed so that the first government “of the people, for the people, and by the people shall not perish from the earth.” Allowing peace at any cost would have permitted seccession and the continued practice of slavery on southern plantations. I don’t hear Cindy Sheehan and Rev. Al Sharpton screaming that the Civil War wasn’t worth it.
In 1943, 3,000 American soldiers died in a single battle on the beaches of Tarawa, due in part to a miscalculation of the tides. But they won the battle, and in doing so, secured a strategic position that paved the way for the American campaign in WWII on the Pacific front. At that time, there was an outcry from our citizens who felt that the losses were just too high. Looking back with the benefits of hindsight, you would be hardpressed to find a historian or military scholar who would say the battle wasn’t worth it.
Fewer than 3,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq over the last three years. Ironically, most of those deaths came because our armed forces were trying so desperately to reduce “collateral damage.” If we were really the imperialists the far Left would have the world believe, we’d be carpet bombing the whole Middle East to make a parking lot for our SUVs. I digress. We’re fighting today in Baghdad and Basra so that we don’t have to fight in Omaha and Seattle tomorrow.
Let me tell you: People who cry for peace at any cost do not understand the terrible price they will pay for letting freedom slip out of our grasp.
Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” To demand peace at any cost is to diminish the sacrifices of millions of Americans who have served their country nobly.
To the protesters, who are so fond of saying “one life is too many,” I’ll restate so you can understand: You are saying that peace is more important than freedom. That peace is more important than a country maintaining its sovereignty. That peace is more important than fighting for what is right, just, and good, simply because you can’t stomach the thought of casualties.
You are wrong. There are fights more important than peace. We’re fighting one right now.