Sports, Gratitude and National Security
The sports story du jour is the Iraqi Olympic team telling Sports Illustrated that if they weren’t playing in Athens, they would be helping Moktada Sadr kill Americans – after all, a team member said, resisting occupation is holy. OK, we wanted to gag too; these guys would have had their legs cut off for losing to Paraguay under Uday’s Olympic sponsorship. We’d like a little gratitude, or at least a little silence.
The sports story du jour is the Iraqi Olympic team telling Sports Illustrated that if they weren’t playing in Athens, they would be helping Moktada Sadr kill Americans – after all, a team member said, resisting occupation is holy. OK, we wanted to gag too; these guys would have had their legs cut off for losing to Paraguay under Uday’s Olympic sponsorship. We’d like a little gratitude, or at least a little silence.
We much preferred the Op-Ed in The Washington Post by a French Jew who remembered the liberation of Paris by the Allies 60 years ago Tuesday. Rachel Spreiregen wrote, “The passing years have only intensified the emotion I felt as a young girl that August, and the gratitude to those who saved our future.”
American service personnel deserve gratitude for removing the yoke of Saddam from Iraq. (Remember the wailing about 5,000 Iraqi children dying each month from the sanctions imposed by the UN and enforced by coalition?) Our soldiers deserve gratitude for freeing Iraqi children from prison, closing the torture and rape rooms, stopping the wholesale filling of mass graves (British PM Tony Blair estimates more than 400,000 bodies lie in those unmarked graves and we haven’t found them all yet), and offering the Iraqi people their best chance at civilized, consensual government – if not democracy. Our troops deserve gratitude for liberating the women of Afghanistan (not to mention the men), and the Moslems of Bosnia and Kosovo.
But gratitude isn’t the reason we went to France or Iraq and the ugly ingratitude of the Iraqi soccer team isn’t reason to leave or change our minds about the utility of regime change there. American national security interests determine our military actions and this is understood by soldiers who pay the price. Maj. Glen G. Butler, USMC, wrote in The New York Times this week:
WMD or no, I’m glad that we ended the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. My brother and other American jet pilots risked their lives for years patrolling the “no fly zone” (and occasionally making page A-12 in the newspaper if they dropped a bomb on a threatening missile battery). The former dictator’s attempt to assassinate George H. W. Bush, use of chemical weapons on his own people, and invasion of a neighboring country are just a few of the other reasons I believe we should have acted sooner. He eventually would have had the means to cause America great harm – no doubt in my mind… I also fear if we do not win this battle here and now, my 7-year-old son might find himself here in 10 or 11 years, fighting the same enemies and their sons… Michael Moore asked Bill O’Reilly if he would sacrifice his son for Falluja. A clever rhetorical device, but it’s the wrong question: this war is about Des Moines, not Falluja. This country is breeding and attracting militants who are all eager to grab box cutters, dirty bombs, suicide vests or biological weapons, and then come fight us in Chicago, Santa Monica or Long Island… No, I would not sacrifice myself, my parents would not sacrifice me… for Falluja. Rather, that symbolic city is but one step toward a free and democratic Iraq, which is one step closer to a more safe and secure America.
Their mission is not for them. It is, in the end, for us. And we, at least, are grateful.