Wars of Choice

That Moveon.org should produce an despicable ad constitutes nothing new. Most leftists aren’t wrong because they’re evil, they’re wrong because they’re wrong, but Moveon presses the envelope. Not only are they wrong, they’re pernicious, utterly without scruples or redeeming characteristics

This latest effort depicts a "mother" holding a child, cooing about his growth then saying, to paraphrase, "John McCain, if when you say we’ll be in Iraq for a hundred years, you were depending upon my son, you can’t have him.’

Woah, Nellie.

Now, the left is, and always has been, profoundly anti-military. Just hit a few of the ACLU sites for wonderful information about how to ensure that your impressionable bairns can avoid even so much as hearing from a military recruiter. Or consider the insufferable "Code Pink". Like Bill Clinton, the Left "loathes" the military and cannot fathom the mind set of someone who (GASP!) might consider military service the highest of all callings in a free society. Indeed, but for those young men and women willing to don olive drab, anyone wearing pink might find themselves also wearing a toe tag.

But consider the rank inanity of this ad. First, with any luck, the child will grow up to wholly reject his Mommy’s addlebrained thoughtlessness. Or, at least, be willing to cut the cord and tell his Mom, gently but politely, "I’m 18 now, Ma, and it’s up to ME to make the decisions which affect my life."

Second, what’s so special about Iraq? We will almost certainly reach 100 years in (say) Germany or – perhaps – Korea, or one of the dozens if not hundreds of other places we presently considered worth defending with our lives. Why choose Iraq for special opprobrium? Where's the ad about abandoning Korea?

The Left is always willing to defend freedom in a courtroom, but blanches when defending it requires somewhat more forceful actions. Those legal briefs can be pretty thick, but they won’t stop a bullet. Anyone who thinks that our freedom is grounded in the Constitution – as opposed to the willingness of our citizens to fight and, if necessary, die to defend it – is wholly divorced from reality. Al Queda will not be stopped by injunctions or Supreme Court sophistry; it requires less subtle means of persuasion.

If any of my children want to fight for freedom, I would be astonishingly proud. I’ve suggested it, but I can’t force them to join. A staffer from the Republican Assembly office just shipped out to the Marines, with our awe and gratitude. Without impugning their patriotism (overmuch), I wonder how many Moveon.org folks of the right age have actually served? Or would even consider serving.

And the level of their discourse is so idiotic. "War of choice"? EVERY war is a war of choice. The question presented is whether the alternative is worse. The opposite of war is, often, not peace, but slavery – or worse. The US could have stayed part of Britain; the North could have let the South go. Cutting a deal with the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese would have been easy; merely ignoring their aggression would have sufficed. Letting the North take South Korea would have "saved" 45,000 American lives. If one objects to "wars of choice", those lives were wasted.

Just so in Iraq. Allowing Saddam to continue to lord it over 25,000,000 or so miserable slaves, using rape as a weapon, murdering hundreds of thousands of his own people, launching two wars of aggression, and – according to all the intelligence, as even the Rockefeller report admits – pursuing weapons of mass destruction AGAIN, was certainly an option. It may well be, as Paul Mulshine suggests, that democracy in Iraq – coupled with a desirable outcome (that is, one which does not favor Shia fundamentalism, ala Iran) – is impossible. But that’s a wholly different argument from the one Moveon advances, to wit, that fighting for other people’s freedom is outrageous and unAmerican.

Let’s be clear: Americans haven’t fought for their own freedom since the Revolution. WWII was – as Moveon’s ancestors, the America Firsters, accurately diagnosed – a wholly foreign affair. The US could easily have stayed out of European and Asian conflicts, but Roosevelt – properly – saw a "war of choice" as infinitely better that a world enslaved.

Not one of the men who died on the beaches of Normandy was fighting for American freedom. Not one of the men who died around Pusan or at Inchon was fighting for American freedom. Were those wars "wrong"? Ask a present day South Korean; maybe even a Frenchman.

Is war only correct when it involves direct national self interest? Does it somehow become wrong when, as with just about every war America has ever fought – at least since 1898 – it’s selflessly about preserving the freedom of others?

Perfectly rational reasons exist for opposing the Iraq incursion; reading a Mulshine column sets forth many of them. In part, simple selfishness suffices: what happens to other people around the world simply isn’t our concern. Not especially noble, but understandable. Or, as Paul notes, as between Saddam – a miserable thug but pretty much neutered – and a "free" state which instantly aligns itself with the loonies in Iran, he prefers the former.

THAT makes some sense. Moveon, however, is simply pathetic. Given that the entire Left is, now, based upon urban legends ("Bush lied!!") which they know to be true, so true they must be, it’s hardly surprising. Their "thought" – such as it is – need not be coherent, and, like most emotion-ridden, anger based "thought", it never is.

Ironic, isn’t it, that while many of us honor the last few survivors of the Greatest Generation, because they selflessly defended freedom half a world away, the modern left considers their efforts unworthy, because they fought a "war of choice".

We don’t know how history will judge the effort in Iraq; Truman left office in disgrace, his poll ratings poisoned by popular dissatisfaction over the handling of Korea. Now, he’s widely regarded as a near-great President for courageously standing up for freedom, against tyranny, despite popular opposition. History vindicated him, not his anti-war critics.

Predicting history’s verdict is always a dicey undertaking, but it’s fairly certain that history will regard Moveon as a dishonest, small, squeaky, whiny, disreputable lot of misguided fools.

Because they are.