Iraq War Need Honest Debate

[Jelly]

I think this guy makes some excellent points...

Iraq war needs honest debate on obligation

Published on: 08/21/05
The media's enchantment with protester Cindy Sheehan and the anti-war left's envelopment of her as its untouchable icon have failed to arouse public passions — or to spark the movement protesters want.

Even Sheehan press releases presumptuously declaring, with her temporary departure from Texas, that "the president is not off the hook" for a "war based on lies" suggests that the anti-war left will overplay its hand. The initial sympathy she elicited as the grieving mother will ultimately turn, first to boredom and then to alienation.

The country simply does not share, and is turned off by, the left's intense anger, its gleeful predictions of failure in Iraq and its scurrilous efforts to exploit our compassion for the grief borne by survivors to spawn a political movement. It is turned off, too, by the left's constant effort to call attention to fatalities in a way that suggests the rest of us are unaware of the sacrifices being made on our behalf, and that if we knew the precise number, we'd bring the rest home.

The anti-war left seems to believe that there's a magic number that will repulse the country and that when the milestone is reached, the nation will turn to its retreat agenda.

I'd like to feel, as it was possible to do with last week's prayer vigil at the state Capitol, that those who died are being honored because a grateful people ought to know and recognize them as individuals, without seeing their sacrifice exploited or their deaths interpreted for political persuasion.

Protesters, like those who turned out last week at Little Five Points, Decatur and Marietta, may be honestly motivated. And it may be entirely coincidental that protest sites, if not numbers, correlate with anti-Bush cons uencies.

But the feeling is strong that had they not found Cindy Sheehan, they would have found some obscure do ent about weapons of mass destruction, or some tell-all administration critic, to drive them to the same streets.

One inescapable feeling has persisted throughout the debate about Iraq. It is that the nation cannot get past Vietnam and the cynicism it engendered among an intellectual class — many of today's opinion leaders — for whom service was optional.

It, and other '60s movements, left a legacy. That legacy is juvenile rebellion against ins utions and authority. Combined with the Vietnam generation's cynicism about military and government leaders, it spawns a population in perpetual complaint — ready to take to the streets, to shout or march, but always without obligation to have a solution — or to be a part of it.

Liberals such as U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) call for a return of the draft, and others of his ilk are quick to call attention to politicians whose children are not serving in Iraq. But you never sense that the call is issued because they truly believe that the nation would be stronger if all its citizens accepted an obligation to military service, as it most certainly would.

It is, instead, a call that comes because they oppose President Bush's position on Iraq and believe a draft — as with the photos and running tally of dead soldiers — will turn the nation against him.

For my part, I yearn for that debate, for an honest no-other-agenda debate about the obligation each of us has to defend the country, without the liberty that no democracy can grant to pick and choose our wars based on whether we like the president or agree with his policies.

But that's not the debate they invite.

I yearn, too, for a dialogue that introduces us to those who have made the supreme sacrifice because, by God, we should know them and what they stood and died for — not because their deaths add to the tally that will bring us to our national senses.

How many deaths is too many? One, if the result is that we abandon the cause they died for before achieving victory.

Cindy Sheehan's son, and the generations of those who served and died before him, earned her the right to say or do as she pleases. But neither she, nor the anti-war movement that enveloped her, has the right to define this cause for the rest of us.


— Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

[Nbadan]

the left's intense anger, its gleeful predictions of failure in Iraq and its scurrilous efforts to exploit our compassion for the grief borne by survivors to spawn a political movement. It is turned off, too, by the left's constant effort to call attention to fatalities in a way that suggests the rest of us are unaware of the sacrifices being made on our behalf, and that if we knew the precise number, we'd bring the rest home.

If this dialogue is what passes as an 'honest' debate on Iraq I’d hate to see what a partisan take would look like.

The left does not want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq, but when you see a building burning you yell fire, and Iraq is a hot-tinderbox.

[whottt]

There is no honest debate...the left essentially stands for nothing these days except hatred of Bush. If Bush is for it they are against it....and they want anyhting he tries to do to fail. That is the modern left.


How often do you see these guys worried about the fate of the Iraqis? About womens rights in the middle east....

Never...you never see the left worrying about that kind of stuff anymore.

You see them saying...

"These people are savages...let's the get the out and leave them to their fate".

Still the racist party....ask those trying to cross the borders these days.

The left stands for nothing anymore...except getting rid of W...someone needs to tell them they already failed at that.

[cecil collins]

You see them saying...

"These people are savages...let's the get the out and leave them to their fate".

What are you talking about? How can you criticize any of my comments, when you are typing stuff like this. I don't know who you talk to, but I sure they are just as dumb as you. Did anyone really say that? At any rate, care for the Iraqi people is the least of this administrations concerns, but it's a good card to play.

[Vashner]

The Iraq War is too big for any one post. I think there has been plenty of spirited debate...

But I don't think you can just mull this war into 1 post...