This coming
Tuesday is election day. It’s a big day. Outcomes are uncertain. The nation
remains divided. It’s time to vote.
This coming
Wednesday, we as a nation have been at war with Iran for 47 years. We didn’t declare
war. They attacked us. They stormed and seized the United States Embassy—sovereign
U.S. soil—in Tehran. They held Americans captive for 444 days. They were
returned the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
Since that
time, most U.S. Presidents have personified Neville Chamberlain in their
dealings with Iran. Some have aided our enemy. Only in the past year has the United
States answered the ongoing attacks---mainly terrorist acts—with military
force.
Whether you
believe that we should attack Iran or not, we should take this Wednesday to consider
that we have been at war for 47 years, 46 of them very passively on the
defensive. Think about this. Pray about this, and pray for those charged with
defending our nation.
And don’t
worry about the world going to war. We are already there. Will it escalate
beyond a couple of regional conflicts and riots in Europe? Will the Chinese
move against Taiwan? Will Putin kick off a nuclear exchange?
These are
valid questions, but the answer is that the world is heading toward larger-scale war. Is it the Armageddon of prophecy?
Perhaps and
perhaps not. That battle and the war that prompts it will come without regard for our politics. For now, ask
how we, as the American people, could tolerate attacks upon our sovereignty
around the world for 47 years.
Election Day
is important. Considering whether we should seek victory against our
longstanding attacker, appease him further, or just surrender to the Death to
America mantra as inevitable is worth a day of consideration.
~
War is an
ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of
moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much
worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or
thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master,
such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against
tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and
good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their
free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing
which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he
does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of
being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than
himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their
ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must
be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
"The
Contest in America," Fraser’s Magazine (February 1862); later published in
Dissertations and Discussions (1868), vol.1 p. 26
