Rebels Without a Clue

I hardly want to give any attention to the anti-war protesters gathered (and arrested) in St. Paul this week because as a whole they have no credibility. But on the status of Iraq, here's a headline to ponder:

Nearly 125 Shot Dead In Chicago Over Summer
Total Is About Double The Death Toll In Iraq

CHICAGO (CBS) -- An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. ...

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period.

In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.

Though I won't dwell on this, it's worth noting the higher death toll is in the home town of anti-war candidate Barack Obama.

But to the St. Paul protesters, my point is: this is not your father's war. Vietnam was lost largely because doomsayers in the press managed to demoralize a nation and its military, and protesters waged war against their own country. Your deplorable behavior yesterday shows who is living in a fantasy. You think it's still 1968. People know more and know better today, and supporters of the war in Iraq were determined not to let history repeat itself. The surge is working, as even Rep. John Murtha conceded. Crime is up in Chicago, down in Iraq.

It's time to give up the tired old canard about Bush making up lies to lead us into war. (And get your own story straight - is Bush a babbling idiot, or a deviously brilliant shyster who hoodwinked the world into war? Make up your mind.) The President didn't make up the WMD photos and reports that leaders around the world accepted as evidence of an international threat. Whether the grains of truth in those reports were sufficient justification alone, no one argued Hussein wasn't a dirty fighter. Saddam Hussein thumbed his nose at the U.N., who routinely passes meaningless resolutions it has neither the guts nor the know-how to enforce. Whether Hussein had WMDs yet, he was building them, and he was crazy enough to use them. To put the stakes in perspective, imagine how many lives could have been saved if Hitler had been stopped sooner. We will never know how many lives were saved because Hussein was stopped, pursued, captured, then tried and sentenced by his own people.

And now, freedom is blooming in Iraq. Like it or not, lives are being saved by this war. There has been no mass chemical-bombing of Kurds since April 2003. Schools, hospitals, public infrastructure, and houses of worship are being rebuilt with American help, as they were in Germany following World War II. This is what we do. Yes, the Iraq death toll is tragic, but nowhere near what our enemies want it to be. And for the record, we're the ones trying to keep the count low.

Protesters, let's be introspective: For most of you, "anti-war" is a convenient position to take when you really just disagree with someone's personal morality or politics. That's why we didn't see you when Clinton sent troops to Bosnia and Kosovo. Your hatred for Bush and conservatives has almost nothing, if anything, to do with war. Be honest and go march with NARAL or the nearest anti-Israel rally.

For those of you remaining who are sincerely against war itself and are not blinded by personal hatred of conservatives (you would be the peaceful ones who don't actually commit violence to promote your cause), I understand you because in my pacifist days I made the same arguments, namely that war is the recourse of knuckle-dragging bullies who don't have the intelligence to resolve conflicts with kind words and hugs. I once declared myself a conscientious objector and told an army recruiter I would not kill people to solve problems because I knew a better solution.

My pacifism (anti-war and anti-gun) was drawn directly from my Christian faith, though I was more than a little snide in how I preached it. But over my adult life, reason led me reluctantly to some conclusions:

Bad people don't listen to reason. That's one reason they're bad. When bad people have guns, you need guns to stop them. Stopping bad people from killing and enslaving people saves lives. "Freedom, Justice, and Equality" don't come from dictatorships, they come from democracy. When tyrants are in power, liberty is seldom if ever achieved through negotiation.

This is not philosophy, this is history. Here's the philosophy:

"We believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace."

I learned this from a President I once derided as warmonger and now revere as one of the greatest American heroes of all time, Ronald Reagan.

Sen. McCain said unequivocally last night, "I hate war." I agree. Any reasonable person does. War is evil, but it can be the only means to overcome the greater evil of tyranny. And as a matter of definition, peace without liberty is tyranny. Even a tyrant can achieve peace at the expense of liberty, but such a society is inhuman. This is not how we were meant to live.

So those of you rare sincere pacifists, please consider carefully the logic of your blanket criticisms against war. In principle, I appreciate your rationale, but I ask you look seriously at whether war has historically in the end reduced the loss of life. Lives saved by liberty cannot be measured, but compare the lives lost in WWII, for instance, to the lives lost through the quiet tyranny of the former Soviet Union and other Communist regimes. If only by such numbers, assess the logic of whether war, however evil, can result and has resulted in eventual good.

If you'll acknowledge this, we can talk.