What Do We Tell Them?

Deborah Venable

03/22/03

American military might has once again been called into play on foreign shores. Thank God! Thank God that the military action is taking place on FOREIGN soil and not in our own back yards – yet. For that we should be thankful to God, this country’s leadership and those courageous Americans who will fight there so we won’t have to fight here. Most of them are able to do what they have to do for that very reason – to keep the battles away from American soil. Americans have been shedding their blood in foreign wars for the last century for that reason – and this time it is no different. When children ask why there are wars and why we have to send people to fight them, what should we tell them? I have to wonder what the majority of American citizens are telling their children these days. I have to wonder because so many adults still do not get it.

The world is a complicated place. Children in America have been sheltered from much they needed to know and understand for many decades. Consequently, as adults they have no idea how to deal with the complications of reality – just one of which is war. Entanglements and alliances with foreign powers will always necessitate that Americans fight in wars – yet many who are most against war for any reason, would encourage and seek out these entanglements and alliances. Because many are so misinformed about foreign relations, they will ignore the obvious and bleat like sheep for “authorization” from such entities as the United Nations and NATO. The so-called “world community” is an oxymoron making any attempt at a “united” group of nations a silly idea at best and the dangerous entities they have become in reality. Before anyone should think that I coined the above as an oxymoron, let me say that others have said it before me. Our “communities” may have grown larger in modern times – but certainly not to that extent! Communities exist in common purpose because of mutual location and similar concerns. The “world” is a vast mixture of locations and concerns, philosophies and goals, cultures and governmental interests. It is absurd to think that governments based on such differences of culture, philosophy, religion, and regional concerns could ever act as a community with a common interest. When are humans going to wake up and realize the folly in that logic? Instead children are taught to believe in the concept of world peace through international cooperation.

Diplomacy has become big business in this complicated world of mixed concerns. The big business of diplomacy operates within all variations of economic, and governmental interests and produces negative by-products of graft and greed. Career diplomats are worse than career politicians in that that they not only DO NOT represent the people that make up nations, but they do not even feign to. Only the power players in governments are represented in diplomacy. The interests of those governed are swept out with the “palace trash.” So, naturally wars start. Wars will always be started by the failure of diplomacy. Nothing can change that.

Unlike diplomatically arranged alliances and entanglements, however, wars CAN actually be in a nation’s best interest – in a nation’s people’s best interest even. Especially a nation of self-governing people, like the united States of America. (No, I didn’t forget to capitalize “united.”) It is far past time that each individual consider what is best for a real community with common location and mutual concerns. After all, that is precisely what America’s Founders were considering when they established a place where we would have the right for such thoughts. Diplomacy was tried then, and it failed. What resulted was war, and from that war a great victory for mankind. That war WAS fought in our own backyards, and those children witnessed it and died from it. What do you suppose the children of the British soldiers who fought that war here were told? Were those children told that their fathers were fighting so that the American colonists would not come to England and kill their king or the crown’s subjects? Were they perhaps told that England needed all the resources from America to continue its “super power” status in the world governments of the time, and therefore, their fathers were fighting for the future of England and the king? Diplomacy, if you can call it that, had failed to secure all the riches of this new world and the labor of her people in the name of England and the king’s name because it had nothing to offer those who were the targets of attempted permanent oppression. So, war resulted and true liberty and self-government was born. What diplomacy could have stopped that in our nation’s best interest?

Fast - forward a couple of centuries or so. Now, the necessity of war is defined by an official declaration of war. Outside of the reach of the convoluted diplomacy process, we have an inherited wisdom to determine when that diplomacy fails – and we, the self-governed, are to determine when that point has been reached. We determine it through our duly elected representatives to the United States Congress. The last time we used that constitutional directive, however, was over sixty years ago. Since then, we have not had an elected Congress that would act in the best interests of the united States of America, or a president that could insist on it. In the thinking of some of those “pass the buck” elected representatives, this Constitutional directive is archaic and outdated in modern times. Not all, but most of our representatives must not have the interests of this country at heart. Read what one Congressional representative had to say recently here.

“Resolution” is the modern term used to describe what our Congress and diplomats decide is in our best interest. Congressional resolutions and United Nations resolutions are neatly numbered and subsequently ignored or employed to define purpose in our continuing struggle to determine America’s national interests. Our government is a travesty of self-important benign gestures in the “world community” of diplomacy first. This is precisely what is causing the current national hand-wringing response to a very real threat to our national security. Make no mistake about that!

America’s military might is maintained only through the vigilance of a people who wish to tell the world that we are different. We are different because our leadership is not determined by birthright to a crown, but by ascension by consent of the governed – at least by those who take their responsibility seriously. We are different because we do NOT wish to occupy or colonize foreign lands or take their riches for ourselves. We are different because we extend our helping hand in friendship and human compassion for those less fortunate. We are different because we do not back down from a fight for our liberty and way of life. Our liberty and way of life have been threatened for years now. Terrorism has threatened us. What are we telling our children? What does it matter? They are seeing, first hand, their country torn apart by a battle of propaganda diplomacy over an issue that never made it past the Constitutional requirement of “national interest.” Should we or should we not remove from power those who have stated their desire to destroy us? If our elected representatives cannot stand up for us in such an easy question of national interest, how can we expect a president, with the power to do so, to make that determination without citizenry from every one of these united States screaming for “world approval” before invoking the military might that can make it so? Say what you will, but this president tried to work within the phony system of diplomacy, set up in a “world community” that ignores America’s interests and tries to harness her vast economic and military power at the drop of a hat. He will continue to give ground to this “world community” because he thinks that is what most Americans expect him to do, but thank God he deviated from the convoluted, greedy diplomacy long enough to send in our troops. I pray he still has the will and the good sense to do it the next time – the next time our gutless, elected representatives in Congress refuse to do their duty. Once and for all, Americans need to realize that our military might is unleashed on a government that poses a threat to us. They are not the only ones – but the others are taking notes. It has always been that way. Do we still wish to tell the world that we are different? Or do we wish to convey a message that we have lost control of our country, and our leadership does not act in America’s interests?

What do we tell the children of those who fight this war today? Do we shield their eyes from televised images of what war really is in modern times, or do we carefully explain that this could be OUR country the next time? Do we have the intelligence to explain to our children that Saddam Hussein’s regime is built on communist philosophy cloaked in religious jihad? That is the truth. Do we tell our children the truth these days, or do we allow them to grow up in an ignorant pursuit of diplomatically achieved peace that would see us enslaved to a communist doctrine of cruelty?

North Korea is watching. China is watching. Russia is watching. All of the Middle East is watching. Socialist Europe and Canada and Mexico are watching. They are all taking notes. Where do you think the next war will be fought if Americans fail to send the right message? THEN what will we tell the children – when the inevitable wars are brought home to their own backyards and the blood of their fathers shed on foreign shores did not protect their delicate sensitivities from the reality of war? Will we tell them that we marched and puked and ranted against a president who knew all too well EXACTLY why he had to send in our troops to those foreign shores? Will we tell them to find solace in a world community of nations that has NEVER acted in America’s interests? Will we tell them that Hollywood thought it knew about foreign policy and what was good for America? Will we tell them that they should rise up in revolt against their own military might and those who control it – just as the communist philosophy is hoping they will do?

The world is watching, America. What do we tell them?

Home Rant Page Feedback Welcome!