True Global Benefactors in a Modern World

Reading so many articles about the incredible support work being carried out by our military in the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean which were recently hit by those massive tsunamis, it appears that the United States and its military are finally getting some good press on the world stage for a change. Surely all of the goodwill support they are providing in the tsunami stricken regions… in conjunction with their selfless attempts to help the indigenous peoples of both Afghanistan and Iraq set up some form of self-governance so that our presence there will not be required forever... will blow away all of the "Imperialist America" tripe that has been bandied about by so many pundits for the last 2 years (and more) wouldn't you say?

Both the wealth and the military might of America have been used quite extensively over the last century in numerous commitments to peace and the rebuilding of nations left wasted by wars that they fought between each other (and even with us) or by the tyranny of dictators such as Saddam Hussein. The thing that completely irks me about the political platitudes of the Michael Moore types in this particular regard is the fact that... being the last superpower in the world and having enough military strength to actually go empire building anywhere we might want to go on the planet... the United States of America quite obviously uses the utmost self-restraint by letting the peoples of the rest of the world do the things they want to do for as long as they want to do them right up to the point that it becomes necessary (for our own protection) to take limited preemptive action in one of those regions of unrest... and still we do not move in with plans to stay, but rather with plans to help the people there build their own self-governance so that perhaps... just perhaps... they can have some semblance of the freedoms that we enjoy in our own non-imperialist nation.

We could ever so easily use our military might to overrun and overtake the rogue nations of the world... but in our strength we choose not to do so. However, in reading so many of the propagandist articles written and/or posted across the broad spectrum of the internet and in the world press at large, one might suspect that perhaps a new Holy Roman Empire is being built by directives from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The facts stand clearly in opposition to such tripe for any that are willing to see them. But the hate-mongering and the vicious lies against the current occupant of the White House and our military in Iraq continue relentlessly.

I have heard it said, by several on the left side of the political aisle, that any use of military should be purely defensive. Well guess what? I too believe that the reason for a military is for the defense of the nation. But from where I sit the words defensive and preemptive absolutely are not mutually exclusive. In point of fact, I believe that a preemptive defense is a far better defense than waiting within your borders for another 9/11 to take place and then having your military scurry about the interior looking for more culprits who might be planning to continue the work that was started. And I would even submit that were GWB to have taken precisely that latter position with regard to the national defense after 9/11… only to have our nation suffer one or more additional attacks on a scale similar to the first one... then those same people on the left would very likely have been castigating the man for being such a worthless do-nothing who sat back in his cowboy pride and arrogance and languished in his Texas ranch house while the terrorists dismantled the security of the entire United States of America.

Well poopoo on them and their anti-preemptive "only for the defense" ideas where the use of the military is concerned. GWB quite thankfully had the better idea, and he sent our military out after the jut-jawed perpetrators of evil in various locations around the world. In the years since the attacks of 9/11 the American people have so far suffered no further attacks within our borders, and bin Laden... who used to have access to whatever terrorist training facilities he wanted to use in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the region... has now instead been relegated to TV studios where he publishes pre-election speeches that sound eerily akin to those of the leaders of the Democratic Party in America.

So you can say what you will about the President and/or his decisions with regard to the use of our military, but when the history books are written by the smart folks who have the benefit of being removed from the action by a season in time, GWB will most likely be heralded as the man who almost single-handedly held the line against a world terrorist insurgency that might have had far greater success in spreading their evil across the globe had a man of lesser resolve sat in the Oval Office when these things came to a head in New York City one peaceful weekday morning when innocents by the thousands were "slaughtered for a cause" that is among the most evil this world has ever seen.

As of November 2004 it appears that a majority of the American people agree with me... to which I can only say... Thank God! And when those history books are finally written in fifty years or so, I honestly believe that the recorded actions of our military in Afghanistan and Iraq will be reported as having been just as surely the actions of global benefactors as those they also carried out in Sri Lanka, Sumatra and elsewhere in the wake of the incredible tsunami disaster the day after Christmas 2004.