No Time to Retreat

(This letter was submitted on August 19, 2006 to the Glencoe News by author Harvey M. Sheldon and published Sept. 7^th. It is posted here with the permission of the author.)

The events of the last month or so in Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq are deeply troubling. From my perspective, a fanatical Islamist autocratic regime in Iran now openly touts itself the protector of Hizbollah and has fomented demonstrations and provided support to insurgents and mobs in Iraq. It pronounces proudly the desire to wipe out the state of Israel, which it will not even deign to call a state. It furiously enriches uranium and disdains offers of peaceful nuclear development that would limit its ability to create nuclear weapons. It provides missiles and training to terrorists. It invites our President to consider that Islam is the better way to live than the American way.

So what is the response here on the North Shore? It seems I get mail from people I know touting a Democratic candidate for Congress, whose Web site declares Mark Kirk unfit to serve because he voted in favor of a prayer resolution when the American forces began the invasion of Iraq. Others take out full page ads, denouncing the President of the United States and demanding that no attack upon Iran be contemplated.

Certainly, American conduct of the war on Islamist fanatics is imperfect. It had enormous success in the aftermath of Sept. 11 with the rousting of Taliban and Al Qaida from Afghanistan. It had territorial success in removing any threat from Saddam Hussein, a despot who paid suicide bombers, harbored terrorist murderers, and was acknowledged to have developed and used vicious chemical and other weapons of mass destruction against his opponents. We are now being tested enormously, and it is uncertain whether the Iraqis who want to build a democratic nation will prevail over those who prefer sectarianism, terror and factional rule.

Iraq may well end badly. It would be a terrible shame, given the sacrifice of those fighting men and women over there for us. I know some of them, and they are proud to fight for their country and proud to have given a chance to the people of Iraq. Whether those people can make Iraq into a democratic and functional state is mostly up to them, but it is also still and in all decency, up to us.

So what does the candidate of the “peace” seekers want to do? He favors formal declaration of a staged withdrawal. In other words, he declares retreat just as those Iraqis who have risked their lives for democracy are teetering on civil war. Wow. I sure would not pick him to be on my team. In 1776, the assemblage of militia and a very few trained soldiers that comprised the Continental Army under George Washington had succeeded in forcing British retreat from Boston, but subsequently suffered the loss of New York, and had to retreat south toward Philadelphia. They encamped on the banks of the Delaware at Christmas, their feet frozen and cut, their supplies meager, their shelter scant. Tom Paine, who had accompanied them part way and followed their progress, wrote his new countrymen words than cannot be surpassed and merit repetition now:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Certainly we can fight smarter and better than we have. Indeed we must do so. Yet I fear that just when the Democratic donkey should turn into a serious steed, it has sprouted an ostrich’s neck and head. Do they not see the fascism that is looming against us? This time it is not driven by Germanic pride and empirical lust for resources, but by religious zealots who truly believe the only good Christian or Jew is either compliant or dead. Poor Mark Kirk. He takes freedom seriously. How can he hope to succeed when so many donkeys have their rears in the air?