I have said what I have to say on this topic--fir now. It isn't over.
In the words of Winston Churchill, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
We have struck back at a theocratic totalitarian terrorism-promoting dynasty which has been at war with us for nearly half a century. As in all military conflict, and even in training, we have lost warriors who fight for this country. The numbers, for those who keep such books, seem large to some by today's standards, but pale in comparison to the number of people we have lost waiting to respond to this and past iterations of the enemy regime.They may pale in comparison to the numbers of people who will be lost to future engagements with this same enemy.
Never, in the course of human history, have we seen such concerted effort by those within our own borders to rail against those fight enemies who have professed so consistently their desire to destroy us, to conquer us, to subjugate our people and enslave or kill us, often by people whose philosophies align with those who would be our conquerors.
Daily, I have seen as those who claim their staunch advocacy, even patriotic fervor for this nation use those sources to generate a miasma of defeatism, that cloud colored by their opinions of one person, dripping with a defeatism that bodes ill for any nation, streaked with an almost jubilant focus on the actions of one man, ignoring the fact that they cannot hurt him without hurting us all.
We do not yet know how this conflict will resolve. We do not know the mind of the person being so judged, despite proclamations being made with telepathic surety. We do not know the future. Decisions are made in secret, and we will know their results as actions based on those decisions unfold, be that for better or for worse. Those decisions are complicated, not just by ordinary political opposition from within this country, but from defectors from the ranks of supporters, siding with those who have proclaimed their irrational hatred for the person who leads, and all too eager to trumpet the dirges of doom one might ordinarily have found them trying to drown out with a more sprightly air.
Defeatism can be contagious, and the complication of hardship on the American people, (a pittance, really, compared to to the hardships willingly endured the last time we won a hot war against totalitarian regimes that would have had us change our religion, our language, and our government's very foundations), weighs heavily on those who make decisions, especially in the midst of a cacophony of defeatist rhetoric designed to demoralize our leaders, our troops, and our people.
While there are those who would join in that dissonant chorus, I will not contribute to the howling of the naysayers. I may be misguided in my faith, but I will not join with those who would have had us speaking Japanese or German by 1950 had they been such a loud voice then, or Russian in subsequent decades. Instead, I try to understand the reasoning behind the actions and future paths that may be taken by someone who is balancing the information from his advisers, the global economy (despite improvements made to it overall), and the attitudes of a nation that swings in some bipolar herd from jubilation to desolation based on the minute to minute twitch of a stock ticker or the price of gasoline.
Through it all, I see an indictment of the generations sated by instantaneous gratification, who cannot see past the moment, and who would have lacked the stomach to endure the months after Pearl Harbor without shaving their heads and donning sackcloth and ashes and wailing in the streets. America required more of her people then, and might in the near future, and I only pray the generations alive can muster the internal and intestinal fortitude to endure setbacks without surrender.
