Summer, 2013—Bought With Blood: Honoring The Fourth Of July

 

 

The Fourth of July holiday always makes me think of liberty.

Cliché, I know.

Thinking about liberty on the day set aside for us to remember how our beloved United States of America won its independence is not exactly original. However, I think it’s safe to say that remembering what this very special holiday is set aside for is something that is often neglected by our citizenry. Too often we seem to view holidays like the Fourth as nothing more than a chance to take a break from our busy work lives and enjoy a family barbeque and nighttime fireworks show. While these American past times are definitely worthy on their own merits, it would be a shame if Independence Day meant nothing more profound to us.

The Fourth of July, as I said, reminds me of liberty and freedom. In 1936, Albert E. Bowen, a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, defined freedom in this way: “Freedom is not bestowed; it is achieved. It is not a gift, but a conquest. It does not abide, it must be preserved.”

I have rarely read such a succinctly powerful definition of that most precious word. Who is it that achieves our freedom? Who conquers the enemies of our freedom? Who preserves our people in their liberties and God-given rights? The answer, of course, is found in the heroic work of all the men and women of the United States armed forces who have striven to keep our country free since the day of its founding; at times, these individuals have performed their work without any thanks from us here in the relative peace and quiet of civilian life. Indeed, there have been disgraceful episodes in American history when our military men and women have been forced to endure ridicule, scorn, and persecution by the very people they work to protect and defend.

Shouldn’t the opposite be true of us? Shouldn’t we care about paying proper tribute to the men and women of the armed forces? Shouldn’t we care about the Fourth of July in the sense that it reminds us that our liberty and freedom have been bought with blood? After all, the job done by our armed forces is a worthwhile one.

We cannot afford to forget our men and women in and out of uniform who serve and protect us. We should remember that liberty and freedom are truly worth fighting for, even if it means ending the lives of those who seek to take our liberty away and do us harm or injury.

One of my favorite motion pictures is Christopher Nolan’s 2008 Batman movie, The Dark Knight. In that movie, Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, played by Michael Caine, offers an introspective analysis of the movie’s primary villain, The Joker, played by Heath Ledger. As part of this analysis, Alfred attempts to explain to Batman that there are some individuals in life who desire nothing more than to cause harm, destruction, and death to those around them. As Alfred puts it, “some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

As ridiculous as it may be to use a Batman movie to illustrate a principle of reality, the fact remains that there are indeed men and women in our world whose actions are not motivated by anything most normal people would understand. For example, few men and women in the 1930’s fully understood Adolf Hitler’s hatred of the Jewish people until it was too late. Few men and women understood how ethnic cleansing could occur in places like the Balkans and Rwanda. Few could fathom why militant Islamists would hijack commercial airliners to use as suicide weapons on September 11^th, 2001. But although few people understood why people would perform such terrible acts of violence, these events still happened. These events were not contingent upon the number of people who understood the motivations of violent hatred. They never will be. These events—or events just like them—will always happen because there will always be people in the world who are willing to cross boundaries of civilized behavior seemingly unimaginable to the rest of us.

There are, unfortunately, people out there in the world who brutally seek out others in order to hurt and kill. It is for this reason that society needs men and women who are willing to use force to defend society. Because there are people who break society’s rules to exploit, harm, or destroy others, it is essential to have those who are trained and on-call to defend us and, if necessary, destroy our enemies.

What is the difference between killing for anger, hatred, or gain and killing to protect others? I, for one, am grateful that that is an issue I am not confronted with every single day of my life. I am also grateful that there are men and women serving in our armed forces who face that decision all the time; I am grateful to them for what they do and I appreciate the personal struggles that I am sure they often go through. It is for them that I choose to honor a day like the Fourth of July.

Some segments of society do not seem to appreciate our armed forces. Perhaps this is because they do not understand the world in which we dwell. It is a world that is filled with evil. To survive in our world, it must be understood that there are people who make evil choices. Sometimes, those evil choices can do a great deal of harm to others. Sometimes, those evil choices are intentionally designed to enslave, abuse, or damage others. This is a truth that many find hard to intellectually grasp. For these people, it is too difficult to comprehend that there are people who want to hurt others, who want to sow chaos and destroy society, who want “to watch the world burn.” Many of these well-meaning yet utterly confused people can be found on the left of the political spectrum.

Some leftists choose to ignore the dangers presented by evil. Some stubbornly refuse to justify violence as a means of self-defense or as a preserver of human freedom. People like this are prone to appease evil, thinking that the best way to stop evil is to satiate its imagined appetite to the extent that it will magically stop inflicting pain and destruction. Appeasement and the attempt to ignore evil both have a long history; the tragic events of World War II prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Because of appeasement and the refusal to confront the evils of fascism early on in the 1930’s, the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust became a reality. It is important to remember that the architects and engineers of the Holocaust were not madmen but careful, concise, and brutally calculating men who carried out their work of death in full consciousness. The history of the Second World War teaches that appeasement utterly fails to promote peace and freedom in our world.

 

Another historical example of the dangers of the appeasement mentality occurred in the 1970’s when Jimmy Carter’s calls for coexistence with communism conflicted with Ronald Reagan’s vision for Cold War victory. In this example, history demonstrated how policies of appeasing evil almost resulted in tragedy for the U.S. and the entire free world. During the Jimmy Carter administration, foreign policies of appeasement left America reeling from political and military defeats in Iran, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua, a loss of nuclear and military superiority, and an overall feeling of retreat, depression, and submission to the inevitable rise of the Soviet Union. After his election as President of the United States, Ronald Reagan immediately did everything in his power to reverse the defeatist trend that was gripping the nation. Ignoring the complaints of liberals, Reagan instituted a massive military buildup, adding new divisions, thousands of fighter aircraft and hundreds of warships, and continued development of new weapons like the B-1 and B-2 bombers as well as the nuclear missile-equipped Trident submarines. He increased the amount of aid and support to anti-communist insurgencies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Poland, and Afghanistan. Of equal importance was Ronald Reagan’s ability to see and articulate the moral and ideological differences between the United States and the Soviet Union.

American liberals have been appeasing evil for a long time. President Bill Clinton’s appeasement policies were even more damaging to American power and morale than Jimmy Carter could have ever imagined; debacles ranging from Somalia, Iraq, Haiti, the first World Trade Center bombing, and Clinton’s own relationship with Yasser Arafat all combined to make the United States look like an impotent blow-hard. In the lead-up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, liberal Democrats used a new form of appeasement—called multilateralism—to argue that the United States was acting rashly in Iraq because without the consent of the world (aka, Germany and France), American foreign military ventures were doomed to fail.

On the other hand, in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush correctly labeled the attacks as acts of war and clearly labeled the enemy as terrorist organizations as well as the rogue nations who harbored or supported them. With his now-famous “axis of evil” speech, President Bush radically altered the way in which America faced its adversaries by openly identifying and warning nations and organizations that used terrorism to change their ways or face a day of reckoning.

The reaction from appeasement multilateralists? George W. Bush was acting like a narrow-minded, self-righteous sheriff who needed reminding that America had no right to act on its own initiative. President Bush rebuffed these arguments throughout his presidency by articulating that America would no longer play by the rules of an old diplomatic game where tyrannical regimes were allowed to hide their crimes behind a veneer of legitimacy. The capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq proved that justice, patience, resolve, and focused action are some of the most important tools in America’s fight against international terrorism and despotism.

Tyranny never goes down without some kind of fight; appeasement only serves to embolden the enemies of freedom. Leaders like George W. Push, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld understood this and conducted the War on Terror in new and appropriate ways. The Bush Doctrine represented the drastic change of worldview that took place within George W. Bush the man as well as in his administration after the events of September 11th. It consisted of four important pillars:

1.      In a vigorous break from the past, terrorism would be faced with moral absolutism and handled on a war footing.

2.      Uncooperative state sponsors of terrorism would be included in the target list and would be subject to invasion and regime change.

3.      Invasion and regime change would be preemptive if necessary.

4.      Any U.S. support of a Palestinian state would take place only if leaders like Yasser Arafat were replaced by Islamic leaders who respected democracy, free markets, and measures against terrorist violence.

In 2004, the American people were faced with two presidential candidates who perfectly illustrated the differences between confronting evil and appeasing it. In that election, the American people saw how the strong and steady principles of George W. Bush outmatched the weak-willed, politically motivated character of John Kerry. Despite the overwhelming Republican victories of that year, the latest withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq have proven that the left never ceases to practice its brand of appeasement.

 

As we look into the years and decades ahead, we must realize that the struggle against Islamofascism will be a long conflict in the same tradition as the Cold War—the end may come in an unexpected time and manner. The problem is that American resolve in this fight is questionable. As Western Europe gets conquered by Islam from within, America will increasingly find itself alone in the fight. To win the War on Terror, dedicated U.S. officials will be forced to confront domestic political opposition to prosecuting the war in the first place. Antiwar sentiments have steadily emerged to the point where the Western democracies are quickly losing the will to fight. If the U.S. is to be victorious, policymakers must be coherent and forthright in expounding principled reasons for the continued fight against terrorism. Allowing opposition groups to politicize occasional failures and tragedies is not a path to success.

America faces a powerful three-fold threat: the terrorism of groups like Al Qaeda, the despotism of anti-American regimes in countries like Iran and North Korea, and the appeasement-minded liberalism of the American Democratic Party. Evil thrives on the apathy and ignorance advocated by many in the modern Democratic Party. From the half-hearted and reckless days of President Bill Clinton to the anti-war sentiments expressed by the left concerning Afghanistan and Iraq, liberals have consistently shown that they value political expedience more than confronting evil for what it really is. On multiple occasions, the Democratic Party has chosen to face evil with moral relativism, toleration, and hesitation—endangering the safety and security of the United States of America. The current Democratic administration exemplifies these qualities in spades.

The national vision symbolized by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is one of strength and confidence that the United States of America is the greatest force for good in the international environment. The vision propounded by Barack Obama is that America is a deeply flawed country that needs to be reined in in the international arena so that other countries don’t feel oppressed by American power and success. For Obama, fighting evil and prosecuting the War on Terror always takes a back seat to the needs of the moment and the politics of expedience. Barack Obama constantly apologizes to the world for the war against terrorism and refuses to identify evil whenever terrorist plots are discovered or responded to. For example, he and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, attempted to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks in a civilian court with constitutional protections. This was part of their wider strategy of using the issues of enhanced interrogation techniques and the Guantanamo Bay inmates as political stunts to embarrass the Bush administration. In proposing to try terrorists in civilian courts, Obama and his supporters failed to see that giving terrorists that kind of publicity would be an ideological disaster for the war against Islamic terrorism.

President Obama’s entire foreign policy seems to hold principal allegiance to some sort of transnational cosmopolitanism instead of to the United States and its interests; his rhetorical weakness in fighting the War on Terror, his appeasement of rogue nations, and his “apology tour” of the world are examples of Obama’s directionless foreign policy. His failures in the Middle East—the main battlefield in the War on Terror—are staggering. He failed to capitalize on the Iranian dissident movement which sparked into existence early on in his presidency. His abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt has allowed that country to fall into the hands of dangerous, anti-American radicals. His scandalous treatment of the Benghazi affair has completely wrecked American credibility in Libya. Mysteries concerning what exactly happened in Libya on September 11^th, 2012 remain sufficiently unsolved. As for the rapidly destabilizing situation in Syria, there are grave concerns that the Obama administration is arming dangerous Islamist rebels who have ties to terrorism.

So many people are confused by Obama’s foreign policies, particularly his handling of the War on Terror. President Obama has hypocritically expanded many of the Bush-era programs that have proven effective while irresponsibly (and prematurely) ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He complains of conflicts not worth fighting while increasing the number of drone strikes across the globe. He treats with dangerous dictators in some parts of the globe while aggravating relationships with nascent American allies in others. In so many ways, Barack Obama’s confusing foreign policy demonstrates his obsession with doing whatever is seen to be popular, easy, or expedient at the given moment. It is a foreign policy which manifests President Obama’s failure to understand America’s place in a dangerous world and to understand and value the armed forces of our country who sacrifice so much to do their job with skill and efficiency.

History clearly teaches that evil can only be effectively opposed through strength and fortitude; it is these qualities which will be absolutely necessary for the future peace and prosperity that Americans so earnestly desire. This will become increasingly important in the years ahead as the United States faces military threats across the globe. Chinese threats against Taiwan, if left unaltered, will make a military (or even nuclear) standoff between the U.S. and China almost inevitable. Iran continues to be the primary state sponsor of terrorism in the world and maintains its vow to destroy the nation of Israel. Syria, currently experiencing a vicious civil war, has a record of terrorism and WMD development that leaves dangerous unanswered questions about its future stability. In North Korea, the recent death of Kim Jong-Il leaves the future of the little dictatorship in question. Terrorist organizations inspired by and affiliated with bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network still operate on a franchise basis across the globe. And, as always, the Arab-Israeli conflict will continue to spiral out of control as long as the West insists on treating with radical elements within Palestinian leadership as legitimate players in the peace process. Truly, America cannot prevail in these difficult issues ahead without exhibiting courageous leadership, a strong worldwide military force, and a principled, consistent foreign policy dedicated to freedom and peace.

This Fourth of July is a great opportunity to start us all thinking again of liberty. We should not pass up this opportunity to gratefully remember and honor those fighting men and women who made the continued enjoyment of our freedoms possible. As we watch the fireworks displays, we should be mindful that we live in a world with people who wish to hurt us, enslave us, and even kill us. We should remember that at any moment, the only thing separating us from the evil intentions of such people are those who serve in the armed forces. For those of us who do not understand the important job our military men and women perform—for those who wish to appease our enemies in the hopes that such policies will lead to peace—we must grow out of our naiveté learn from the lessons of history. These lessons teach us that appeasement has never led to peace; it has certainly never ensured that a free people remain so.

On January 19^th, 2009, I spent a few moments of my day contemplating the last day of President George W. Bush’s presidency; I took a little time to reflect upon my earnest gratitude for President Bush, a man with whom I had many disagreements—but also a man who kept my country safe and secure for eight long years. I pay tribute here and now to the Bush Doctrine and to the policies and programs enacted by his administration which deserve the credit of winning the first decade of the War on Terrorism. I express my hope that Americans will one day return to that vision of military strength and clarity propounded by our great leaders of the past, that they will eschew the politically motivated circus acts we have become used to in the current administration’s stewardship. I hope this blog post has prompted the reader to carefully consider the importance of the United States of America’s position as world leader, its role as the caretaker of peace and freedom, and the prominence of the U.S. military in fulfilling those essential roles. I firmly believe that if we take the time to ponder these things, our respect, gratitude, and admiration for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and intelligence operatives who keep us safe from harm will only be enhanced.

Patrick Henry, the Founding orator of the American Revolution, once pled to his countrymen with these words:

“If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!”

 

Patrick Henry spoke these words even as the mighty British armadas of the 18^th-century were amassing against the original 13 colonies. Today, in the 21^st-century, the enemy is far more subtle. Yet, while America’s next challenge may be a terrorist armed with a shoe bomb, a mad-dog dictator with an arsenal of nuclear missiles, or an appeasement-minded government which seeks disarmament and demilitarization, the remedy remains eerily the same as it was those many years ago. If freedom really isn’t bestowed, but achieved, then there really is only one way to achieve and preserve our liberties: if we wish to be free, an appeal to arms is our best hope.

Peace can only be maintained through strength.

I’m glad that we have a military strong enough to do just that—to maintain the peace. They’ve bought my liberty with their blood in the past. They stand ready to do the same even today.

--Christopher Peterson, July 1^st, 2013