The Price of History

In 1945 the NAZI government of Germany’s Third Reich surrendered, unconditionally, to the Allies. The war for Europe was over, and just beginning. Sixty-two years later we, the United States of America, still have troops stationed on German soil. We are there not as an occupying force, but as allies against a nebulous threat that may or may not arise.

In the summer of 2003 the coalition forces led by the United States overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. His government was abolished. Hussein was later found, tried, and executed by a jury of his peers. The Iraqi people have a new, democratically - elected, government and a constitution. We still have troops on the ground, in the air, and off the coast, of Iraq. They are there not as an occupying army but as a bulwark against a threat that is clear, present, and deadly.

Would the Red Army have driven past the Rheine all the way to the French border if the Allies had not remained behind in West Germany? The answer is adamantly: yes. Would the world be a different place had that occurred? Most assuredly, yes. Today the Soviet Union is gone. The threat of insidiously spreading communism is a lesson for a history class, not a current concern of policy makers. Yet we still keep troops in allied European countries- for stability, for peace, for the hope that Europe never again descends into the nightmarish landscape of unlimited war.

So why are we, and our leaders whom we elect and who think they listen to us because they respond to polls, so insistent about leaving Iraq, now? The threat of Islamic extremism and the anti-western policies of Iran are just as clear and just as deadly as the threat that was communism in 1945. We can see the daily struggle that is waged for control of Iraq. If we leave now we abandon our allies to their fate and turn our back on history’s lessons.

Let that be said again: Iraq, the democratic government that represents the people of Iraq, is an ally. When has it ever been an American policy to abandon an ally? Do we, the descendents of those who have fought for freedom and prosperity for over 200 years, now give up on those ideals?

The easy answer is that we give up on our allies because the war is too costly. Economically that argument cannot be supported. The US economy, especially the market for private consumer goods, is still strong and flourishing. Citizens of 1944 would beg to have the economic conditions we currently enjoy. Economically the war has been a footnote, an asterisk to explain why the economy isn’t surging even more than it is now.

So, in the end, the price is too great because of the lives lost. Young men and young women die every single day in Iraq, too many of them innocents and too many of them never having a chance to confront their faceless, shirking, slinking, enemies. But in this age of instant news and sound-bite attention spans, it is not the individual loss that so horrifies and fuels the cries of “Get out now” and “No more blood for Bush”. No, it is the stark numerals of the increasing dead, the sheer weight of daily casualty counts that weigh us down with their repetitive nature and sap our resolve with the seeming futility of their incessant occurrence. We measure worth, now, not in the life of an individual but in the number of the dead.

How many is too many? At what point does the butcher’s bill become too steep and we withdraw to an ignoble, yet safe, distance? Do the 2,999 who have died before mean less than the soldier who brings the casualty count to 3,000? Or is each life a precious monument to a cause?

“Give me liberty or give me death”. Patrick Henry didn’t want the death of his fellow citizens for his liberty, but he stood up willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of our freedom. If we withdraw now, we spit on the sacrifice of those who have already died in the hope of saving those who are fighting for the same ideals. We leave an ally to muddle through as best they can. We hope that we won’t have to return in 5, 10, or 15 years to watch more die, because of our lack of conviction now.

We fight for ourselves, for our friends, for the idea that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

If we leave now, we turn our backs on the idea that our friends are not as worthy of life and liberty as we. And that, friends, is not the attitude of a country I wish to be a part of.