Why are we at War??

Don’t normally get into the political ‘stuff’ on here, but have been staying abreast to the posts (Diesel, US=GG, etc…) and thought my fellow Republicans would appreciate this as I found this on another website and found it very interesting!

The other day my 9-year-old son asked why we were at war. My husband looked at our son then at me. We were both in the Army during the Gulf War and we would both be honored to serve and defend our country again today if called upon.

I knew that my husband would give him a good explanation. He told our son to stand at our front living room window then said, What do you see?" “Oh, trees - cars - our neighbor’s houses.” Pretend that our house and yard is the United States of America and you’re President Bush."

“OK.”

“Now pretend that every house and yard on the block is a different country.”

“OK.”

"Now, see that man coming out of his house with his wife, grasping her by the hair & hitting her. She’s bleeding and crying but he keeps hitting her in the face, throws her on the ground and kicks her to death. Their children watch but are afraid to stop him - they’re crying but do nothing because they’re afraid of their father. So what do you do?

“Call the police?”

“OK”

“Pretend the police are the United Nations. They take your call, listen to what you say you saw but refuse to help. Now what do you do?”

“But the police are supposed to help!”

“But they don’t want to. They say it’s not their place or our place to get involved, and to stay out of it.”

“Even though he’s killed her?”

“Yes, the police believe we should stay out of it. But wait, pretend the neighbor is Saddam, and he turns around and does the same thing to his children.”

“Kills them?”

“Yes. So now what do you do?”

“I guess go and ask another neighbor to help me stop him.”

“What if our next door neighbor sees what is happening and he refuses to get involved as well. What do you do when Saddam our neighbor walks across the street to the old lady’s house, breaks down her door, drags her out, steals all her stuff, sets her house on fire then kills her. Then he sees you standing in the window and laughs.”

Our son whispers, "I close the blinds. My husband asks, “Why?”

“Because Daddy, if the police won’t help, and our neighbors won’t help me stop him, I can’t do it by myself. So I’ll just close the blinds so I can’t see what he’s doing. I’ll pretend it’s not happening.”

I start to cry and my husband looks at our 9 year old and says, “Son, open the blinds, that man is at our front door. What will you do?” Our son balls up his tiny fists & without hesitation says: “I’ll defend my family, Dad, I won’t let him hurt my mom or my sister. I’ll fight him!”

“It’s too late to fight him, he’s too strong and he’s already at our front door. You should’ve stopped him before he killed his wife and children. You have to do what’s right even if you have to do it alone, before - it’s too late.”

THAT scenario is WHY we’re at war with Iraq. When good men stand by and let evil happen again and again…it is the greatest evil of all. Our President is doing what must be done, and what should’ve already been done. As a free nation we need to understand that this war is a war for humanity and that this evil regime must be removed from power so we can continue to live in a free world and not be afraid to look out our windows. These evils must cease so the 9 year olds of the world can grow up in a world of peace, and not feel they must “close” the blinds on atrocities against their fellow human beings. Never be afraid to do what’s right even if you must do it alone!

You made your son watch a man kill his wife and didn’t even call the police? What kind of mother are you?

Nice story.

Now, in that case, why aren’t we or someone else stepping in for all the other countries that are doing similar things around the world? Have you watched the news lately? People are being killed all over the place, but I don’t see anyone stepping in to stop it.

I guess it only applies to countries that have some sort of material wealth that can benefit us, then we decide to do something.

Keep the simplistic war reasons to your forwarded email list. It’s much more complicated than that.

That is the most over-simplified, retarded excuse for a war effort I have ever read. If that were true, we’d be on the ground en-force in Liberia right now, among other places, including Saudi Arabia, Niger, Congo, Israel, etc.

Why can’t Republicans tell the truth, that we fought a war for a foothold in the middle east (which has been Wolfowitz’s plan all along) and get on with it? That is an explanation that makes sense, not some two bit bullshit about actually caring about other people and places, cause we don’t. Our inaction in hundreds of other situations demonstrates that.

The ruthless dictator, Iraq is better off argument is wearing real thin, because it’s not why we said we were going to war (WMD), and not why we did (Politics).

I thought Republicans were the “brainy” ones?

It should be more like

There is a bum squatting in a a hovel in on the other side of the country (as opposed to across the street) who I suspect to be plotting to kill me. I call the police (UN) & ask them to go check it out. They ask me for evidence of the bum planning to kill me, I don’t have any so the police tell me to get lost & quit bugging them. I get fed up, so I go across the country & attack that lousy bum, get arrested & put on trial for abuse.

There, I made up my own story that makes more sense. Is this the reason people don’t understand what’s going on? Do you ‘good guys’ need it to be explained in a way that a 9yr old would understand? LOL


Mommy, why is Rummy shaking hands with the bad man, when he knows he’s been gassing his own people?

If only our foriegn policy and international law could be explained in a way that a 9 year old could understand…

LOL Lumpy! That is fucking hilarious!

Way to go. The kid gets to stay in blissful ignorance. Sad thing is that you seem to be with him there.

/Jacob

Ada,
That was one of the most sincere, moving posts ever made on this forum. It goes to the essence of what it means to be an American. We take alot of flak from the peanut gallery, but we do what we feel we have to do. As a parent, you cannot look your child in the eye every day while ignoring a “clear and growing threat.” It was not going to go away no matter what the fools say. It was going to get much worse.
I trully hope that the likes of lumpy, rumbach, bigprljamfan, natedogg, and others do not stop ONE PERSON from expressing their heartfelt views. You have fought for your beliefs and even the dumbasses mentioned above should respect that. They will always be on the sidelines while we do the hard work. While we make the world safe for them. They haven’t seen the situation on the ground. They just do not or cannot understand what is trully happening.
Please tell your husband and your children that there are many of us out here tonight who are protecting them. When they get a little older, I suggest you fill in your wonderful analogy with real world examples. In particular, please ask them to read about the 1930’s and what happens when we ignore agressive dictators with the resources available to help fulfill their malevolent ambitions.
Tell them from me, that we are not going to let the boogeyman show up at their door. Tell them that honor and courage are alive and well in America.

GREAT thread. I posted this same post a while back.

Now, there is a reason why we dont go everywhere in the world. For one, we only have so many resources and have to prioritize. Secondly, our priority is to protect the American Public from future threats to our safety and interests. That explains why we might avoid sending military forces to Africa, but readily initiate a war with Iraq who’s known for their terrible atrocities and whom we suspect will have the power to blackmail the world - and will do so - unless we stop him pronto. It’s terrible that humanitarian catastrophes happen such as Liberia now, but the best way to use our resources - to prioritize them - is to send them to fight those who pose a threat to our safety today or in the future. Its clear we try to help as much as possible in other situations, but you have to understand that there’s only so much we can do with our resources and STILL be able to maintain Mission-ready status for the majority of our troops.


Man I REALLY just can’t stand you damn unpatriotic hippies. All of you liberals who don’t appreciate this country for the freedom and protection thereof it gives you just DISGUST me. There, I finally got it off my chest.

US=GG, did mommy and daddy used to give you explanations like that when you were even more of a child?

“clear and growing threat.”
The USA is still the ONLY country that really believes this. If someone was watching from another planet they’d collapse in laughter.
“In particular, please ask them to read about the 1930’s and what happens when we ignore agressive dictators with the resources available to help fulfill their malevolent ambitions.”
Remember the USA didn’t declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on the USA when the USA declared war on Japan. Hitler rose to power with the support of Britain & the USA. As late as 1937, the State Dept thought that Hitler a moderate, between left & right, who they must support, or the masses will take control & move the country in a communist direction. As for Hussein, he hardly even had the capacity to fly over his no-fly zones.

Chingon

Man, that poster is cool!

Nice post Ada. You managed to get all the screwball liberals stirred up big time. I don’t refer to them as democrats as many are from outside the USA and have never even been here although they feel free to flap their lips about what is wrong with the USA. Post more often. It sounds like you and your husband are good people.

Lumpy

I can explain why Rummy is shaking the bad man’s hand. A few years earlier, Iran, his next door neighbor took a lot of Americans hostage and became generally a real threat to the middle east. Mr. Saddam didn’t like Iran either. Even though we knew he was a dictator, the more immediate threat was from Iran. In fact, we really didn’t think Saddam was a threat to the middle east at the time. So, we buddied up with Saddam to keep Iran in check. Ya see, sometimes you have to choose to deal with the lesser of two evils. However, liberal minded folks don’t like this, they would prefer we never deal with people who are bad, but in the real world sometimes you have. The best example of this is when we had to ally with Stalin in WWII. Morality is the luxuary of those on the sidelines (or something like that, I can’t remember the exact quote).

The other day at the bank I held the door for a man that could bearly walk.

So since I didn’t help every other person that needed it, that means I had bad intentions for helping the man?

I’m a bad guy, and I love it!

Oh my god, some of you really need to do some more reading and turn off the fox news network!

Lavender, the bigger point to your explanation of our involvment is that the problems we were having with Iran were created by OUR OWN ACTIONS! Supposedly we had a doctrine in place that defended democracy against dictators and communism, but when the Mossedegh government threatened to nationalize their oil reserves, WE overthrew their government (CIA-declassified records… this is not new info) and put the Shah in power. We have a habit of creating problems from backing the wrong horse. Saddam was the same story. Not only did we support him (only after we lost control of the situation in Iran and they took hostages), we gave him ANTHRAX which is a banned substance! Why did we even have this stuff? We knew back in the 80’s that he used it on thousands of his own people. Why didn’t we step in then if we are such humanitarians? We also trained and funded Osama Bin Laden. Let’s not forget all of these NEW countries that became independent
countries after the fall of the Soviets…Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan; ALL of them with Islamic fundamentalist movements, and thanks
to the training by the U.S. of all these warriors for the Jihad during the
uprising against the Soviet Union, not only did the CIA but Pakistan’s ISI
and intelligence recruit them train them, Saudi Arabia and U.S. Taxpayers
FUNDING them, they took their Jihad back to their native countries with them and now we also have this also going on in Indonesia, the Philippines,
stretching all the way to Egypt, and Algeria… Or did you conveniently forget that as well?

The rest of you self proclaimed good guys are so diluted it is really not even worth it to try to converse. I am very patriotic. I love my country so much that I want us to DO THE RIGHT THING, and I don’t live in denial of our obvious mistakes. We have done some great things, but this level of denial from you guys about the nest of war profiteering snakes frankly makes me feel like we have no hope. US=GG, when you post in here do you have the star spangled banner playing in the background?

The analogy of the original post is overly simplistic… it would be effective on my 5 year old, but not on a 9 year old, unless he is a bit slow. Sorry, that whole story sounded trite and contrived to me. Sounds like one of the “patriotic” chain-mail letters I get in my email every day. I don’t buy it.

Roy Batty
SHit, I posted a nice long response to your response but it didn’t go through, I guess.

I’m too busy to rewrite it but the point was - Most of the facts folks in the liberal camp point to are true. However, I believe that the ideoligy lines are drawn as follows (for our purposes anyway): Conservatives tend to believe that often you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, and liberal believe that you should never choose either of hte two evils. I just don’t think the world works like that, unfortunately.