WAR! to be in conflict with life?

What is the price of victory? Many feel that conflict is not a necessity and conflicts like the one in Iraq useless! How do you think those who serve feel? This is a question that has long plagued mankind. With all the books for class and the amount of time spent reading about past wars and researching the current ongoing conflict I now have a better understanding of true price of victory.

In there book Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith show that during the trying times of World War Two those who wrote letters knew this charge very well one chapter is in tiled the price of victory in this chapter you have letters that start not being written to those that have go to war, but instead to those who are charged with leading the war. Most notable General Douglass Macarthur. 

“Liberation! So long our hearts have yearned for this moment when Old Glory again proudly ripples in the breeze over The Islands-we’ve preyed so earnestly for it – have pushed with you and with every fiber of our being”

These thoughts of can also be see in Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Choice.

The American Spirit speaks:

TO the Judge of Right and Wrong
    With Whom fulfilment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
    Our faith and sacrifice,

Let Freedom’s Land rejoice!
    Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
    Of Good or Ill is given.

Not at a little cost,
    Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
    In the drugged and doubting years.

But, after the fires and the wrath,
    But, after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
    To live with ourselves again.

In the Gates of Death rejoice!
    We see and hold the good-
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
    With Freedom’s brotherhood!

Then praise the Lord Most High
    Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
    And not the living Soul!

To the God in Man displayed-
    Wheree’er we see that Birth,
Be love and understanding paid
    As never yet on earth!

To the Spirit that moves in Man,
    On Whom all worlds depend,
Be Glory since our world began
    And service to the end!

These words touch on every aspect of the price of victory the sacrifice, the tears, the choice, and freedom. These words are very similar to some of the words that I have read and heard in the last few weeks of this semester. In his blog Life through the eyes of a Data Marine Psybain speaks of the price.

“You won’t see me cheering and clamoring for another 10 years of US forces in Iraq, nor will I demand we all pull out now. I think a timetable is stupid. If we said we’d leave in a year, the insurgents would wait us out for a year, knowing that we’d be gone soon and they could act a fool then.”

This is the sentiments of many of those who serve they do not wish to go on fighting for years, but it not up to them. As a marine said at a rally I went to

“The armed forces have two jobs one it to train and be prepared for combat. The seconded job is to achieve victory when in combat. Believe me we want to win NO we need to win it is what we train for. “ 

These words remind me of one of my favorite writers Thomas Paine for those who might not know or remember Mr. Paine is one of the forefathers of the United States he wrote an essay called Common Sense. He has two quotes if feel help define what those who both fight and those who want us not to continue the fight.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

As this conflict continues there will be more deaths and there will be more anger and there will be more separation between those who want victory and those who want out.  

I experienced something new this week I was called a “PRO-WAR” conservative, because I want victory in the War. I not sure anyone is “PRO-WAR” war is a destructive form of diplomacy or perhaps it might be a failed form of diplomacy. Victory is that not the goal of any war! So if that makes me “PRO-WAR” then I guess I have to live with it since I feel we need to victory not for us, but for those who we have put in harms way and for those who have given all for victory!

“Faces of the Fallen” this is a link to those who died in service to their nation!

Washington Post

The Choice by Rudyard Kipling

Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff David C. Smith

Life through the eyes of a Data Marine by Psybain