I have also seen how rough it is on military families. I know one couple who have traded years with their son–Dad spends a year in Korea, he gets home so Mom can spend a year in Afghanistan, and when she gets back, Dad goes off to Iraq.
What some people don’t realize is that as hard as this has been, every other war we’ve been in has been harsher, and the stakes have rarely been as high. Casualty rates are of course far higher than I’d like them to be, but they’re nothing compared to WWII, Vietnam, the Civil War, etc.
What bothers me about most anti-war folks is that they seem to have no grasp of what’s at stake here. The overall War on Terror makes more sense to some, but the Iraq theater matters, too.
If we leave Iraq prematurely, our enemies will be emboldened like never before. Osama said before 9/11 that the Americans are paper tigers, that in Vietnam, Beruit, and Somalia, even though the Americans had far greater firepower, they didn’t have the will to win.
Do we really want to prove him right again? Those who share his ideology are causing havoc from Thailand to London to Nigeria, and if we let them win in Iraq, it do nothing but embolden all of them.
If we back down again after losing 1% of what the North alone lost during the Civl War, our moment as a world power is over. Nobody will want to be our friend for fear that trusting us will cause them to get slaughtered by our mutual enemies when we loose interest. And our enemies will know that they can beat us everywhere without even winning a battle. All they’ll need to do is plant some random IED’s and they’ll beat us.
And believe me, that’s what they’ll do.
