“You Can’t Be Afraid to be Aligned with the U.S.”
From the TIB Network:
The world has born witness to a number of tragedies this week. Chief among them was the bombing in Madrid, Spain, but not to be overlooked is the bombing in Baghdad today. We must grieve for those lost and ponder the implications of such acts.
Al Queda won a round in Spain. And for those who would politicize a victory for our sworn enemy are despicable and particularly vile, in my opinion. The Spanish people taught al Queda that if they bomb Europeans, there is the chance that they will surrender. Appeasement isn’t the answer today any more than it was in Chamberlain’s time. The only way to stop the senseless killing and achieve peace in our time is to defeat those who seek to do us harm. That is the lesson that Spain and the rest of Europe should take from Madrid. And quite frankly, so should we.
The bombing in Baghdad proves that we are winning and that the terrorists are getting more and more desperate as the date approaches of the turn over of sovereignty to a new government in Iraq. The people of Iraq suffer the most, but the message of these attacks is aimed straight at us. And we must continually affirm our commitment and obligation to see this undertaking through to its positive and successful conclusion.
Every time a bomb goes off, the terrorists are giving us an opportunity to give in to the erroneous impulse to disengage ourselves from what we know in our hearts and minds to be right. The terrorists want us to abandon Iraq when that nation is at its most vulnerable time as democracy and freedom are at their most critical stage of formation.
Now is the time for all free nations to set aside our differences and stand in support of the cause of liberty. We may have had our differences, but surely we can all agree that we have an opportunity to reduce tyranny and oppression while securing a future for the people of the Middle East and the world that is better than it was yesterday.
That is, after all, what the terrorists fear most: the undiscovered country. We have a fighting chance of making this dream a reality and the forces arrayed against us know this to be true; and they are afraid. They fear their own irrelevance. They are anxious about real peace that they have never known. They shudder at the idea of the power of the people. They shrink at the potential of self-determination.
Americans and most Europeans take these things for granted as we have enjoyed autonomy and privilege all our lives. We must search our souls and seek to understand what it would be like to not have these freedoms that we hold so dear. If we hold these truths to be self evident, that men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; does it not stand to reason that we must challenge those who subjugate and molest? Do we not owe it to relieve those who are persecuted and tormented? One could say that we have a moral obligation to do so.
Free will implies choice. The decision before us is whether to engage those who would utilize cowardly acts of terrorism in the hopes of repelling evil or attempt to placate those who have done us harm with gestures of goodwill that will not pacify them. Terrorists are not interested in peace. They want us asleep, belly up, bloodless, blooey, breathless, buried, cadaverous, checked out, cold, cut off, dead, deceased, defunct, departed, done for, erased, expired, extinct, gone, inanimate, inert, late, lifeless, liquidated, mortified, no more, not existing, offed, passed away, perished, reposing, rubbed out, snuffed out, spiritless, stiff, unanimated, washed up, and wasted. The choice seems obvious now doesn't it?
Commentary by Matt Hurley
