Why?

It is very difficult for me to talk or write of my feelings about the U.S. war in Iraq. No matter what is said, the pain people feel over this affair will mostly put what is said in a bad light or in a light that was not intended. As a result, there is more silence than discussion. This is not good. We need to talk about this and we need to unify opinion into something meaningful that will not put our troops in a dangerous or demeaning situation.

As just stated, it is often a case of damned if I do and damned if I don’t when expressing my support for what we are doing in Iraq. Note that I did not use the “W” word (War). So often the anti-war folks would accuse those supporting our activities as “pro-war”.

Daily, we are reminded of the body-bags coming back from Iraq. When we try to delicately remind people that the total deaths is just 1/40th of the number of people killed on our highways, we are suddenly cast in one of those “bad” lights. Even one life taken due to decisions made by others is too much, but still we have this battle of perspectives.

My principles are simple:

1. We must take the battle to the enemy’s turf and focus on “why they hate us” later.
2. Israel (even with all its warts) has a right to exist.

What is disturbing to me is the absolute and total politicization of this effort, which is undermining progress and hurting our soldiers. At the center of this is the irrational hatred of President George Bush. It is beyond the scope of this writing to explore the reasons for that, but I must restate this is irrational and slightly psychopathic in nature as it blocks reasonable discussions about threats and solutions to our safety and future of the country.

How did we get into this mess…or why do they hate us?

The progressive or liberal voices would say that it is our multinational cultural imperialism mixed with our excessive consumption of world resources coupled with our unnatural need to be the world’s policeman.

Certainly, conservative megalomania manifested in multinational corporations is a problem which is causing increasing worker displacement, when management drops the ball. Secondly, a total lack of alternative energy planning which doesn’t cripple our economy is a problem. Regarding being a world policeman, there is also some truth to that.

Now, as a conservative libertarian, I’ve come clean.

What really, really lies at the heart of the matter is progressive or liberal thought and the general populace’s inability to properly deal with it. Liberal thought is very compelling, however, left to those not using their minds, moral degradation is the result. I could derisively say that this also applies to progressive intellectuals, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Moral degradation has taken and increasingly larger sweep across our nation and the world in the last forty years.

I remember when a local jurisdiction could ban pornography from the shelves of the local stores, but the ACLU will now force it back on there based on 1st Amendment rights. Then, victims had less rights or respect than the criminals…since the criminals are victims and could not control themselves due to their past upbringing. Later, lotteries were instituted with promises of funding our schools. Now the states push immoral activity to keep the system running. Then Indian casinos started. Then, then, then… Even common sense regarding guns is whacky. When I was younger, a gun collector friend told me that any machine gun has to have certain parts disabled or welded to prevent fully automatic operation. Now, it seems everyone can buy a fully automatic AK-47 or other “WMD’s”.

Certainly, conservatives can be hypocritical about these issues, however, progressives cannot even begin to understand that there is even a problem with any of this except the one with guns.

With such a gap of thinking, only some sort of shock treatment will bring these intellectual elites back into line with reality. With them, unfortunately, there will be never ending discussions on what is reality and your reality is OK for you, etc. etc..

To settle this back and forth palaver, I would admonish people to refocus on God of the Bible, and the best way to do that is to get into his word, The Bible. There really is no other basis for discussion. It was the basis for this country and that is just fine with me.