Our enemy is real:
Millions of Iranians attended nationwide rallies Friday in support of the Palestinians, while the country’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel’s continued existence was an "insult to human dignity."
"The creation, continued existence and unlimited (Western) support for this regime is an insult to human dignity," Ahmadinejad said. "The occupation of Palestine is not limited to one land. The Zionist issue is now a global issue."
Ahmadinejad’s remarks came as millions of Iranians held rallies across Iran to protest Israel’s continued hold on Jerusalem, the city where Muslims believe Islam’s Prophet Mohammed began his journey to heaven.
The demonstrations for "Al-Quds Day" — Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem — also spilled over into anti-American protests because of U.S. support for Israel.
In the capital Tehran, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets as they chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." Some protesters also burned American and Israeli flags.
And we have extraordinary men like Lt. Mark Daily who are signing up to serve this country and fight this type of new enemy we face, fanatical Islam:
Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).… Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics.
Sadly Mark died while leading his men in Iraq from an IED. The very same weapon that Iran is training the insurgents on, the very same weapon Iran is supplying the insurgents with. This very same weapon killed a young man who fought for this country, and fought bravely. Christopher Hitchens wrote a quite emotional piece about this young man yesterday and everyone should take the time to read it completely. You won’t be sorry.
This new generation have many who think and believe as Lt. Daily did, even though our MSM would have us believe the opposite, but are there enough of them?
Will there be enough young men and women who believe in something greater then the "I" generation. Who believe in something other then the material and can see that what we are doing in Iraq, and may have to do in Iran someday, is bringing hope to a people who didn’t have it before while at the same time making our country safer by spreading freedom in a area of the world that has hated us for decades.
On Hugh Hewitt’s show yesterday a caller called in with a poem written by LCPL Patrick Joseph Hannon who died in Vietnam on September 4th, 1966. I couldn’t find the poem on the web so I transcribed it here:
But when your country is in need you know you will
We’ve been in Vietnam for several months now
And we’re hardly ready to take our bow
We’ve seen some fellow Marines go down
But I’m sure each one is heaven bound
If my time here is to be
I ask a favor from you to me
Answer my one and only plea
Keep America free.
I am so very proud even though we face the onslaught of MSM stories that come out daily that twist and turn their accomplishments into some kind of sensational crime like Haditha. As Robert Kaplan wrote a few days ago, when they don’t twist their deeds into crimes they instead write a narrative of victims:
The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq’s complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it.
The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them. I am generalizing, of course. Indeed, there are regular, stellar exceptions, quite often in the most prominent liberal publications, from our best military correspondents. But exceptions don’t quite cut it amidst the barrage of "news," which too often descends into therapy for those who are not fighting, rather than matter-of-fact stories related by those who are.
As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: "Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I’m a warrior. It’s my job to fight."
~~~The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims "displaced traditional images of heroism." It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims.
He goes on to write on how heroic actions like Lt. Mark Daily are ignored, or barely printed on, while any sensational story they can find is printed on the front page. Heroes like Sgt. Paul Smith, the first Medal of Honor winner in Iraq:
According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.
Media frenzies are ignited when American troops are either the perpetrators of acts resulting in victimhood, or are victims themselves. Meanwhile, individual soldiers daily performing complicated and heroic deeds barely fit within the strictures of news stories as they are presently defined. This is why the sporadic network and cable news features on heroic soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan comes across as so hokey. After all, the last time such reports were considered "news" was during World War II and the Korean War.
For more on Paul Smiths heroism go here.
His conclusion:
Feeling comfortable with heroes requires a lack of cynicism toward the cause for which they fight. In the 1990s, when exporting democracy and militarily responding to ethnic and religious carnage were looked up upon, U.S. Army engineering units in Bosnia were lionized merely for laying bridges across rivers. Those soldiers did not need to risk their lives or win medals in order to be glorified by the media. Indeed, the media afforded them more stature than it does today’s Medal of Honor winners. When a war becomes unpopular, the troops are in a sense deserted. In the eyes of professional warriors, pity can be a form of debasement.
Rather than hated, like during Vietnam, now the troops are "loved." But the best units don’t want love; they want respect. The dilemma is that the safer the administration keeps us at home, the more disconnected the citizenry is from its own military posted abroad. An army at war and a nation at the mall do not encounter each other except through the refractive medium of news and entertainment.
It’s a shame. But men like Mark and Paul care little whether their stories are written about. What makes them great is that they care only about serving this great country and the men beside them.
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