If Not Lincoln, Then Franklin - Reader comments at The New York Sun

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‘I Didn't Have an Answer'

Submitted by John Simpson, May 12, 2007 21:21

I am sure Lincoln had better plans for America than to shed the blood of a whole generation, but shed blood he did. Oceans of it. Because he saw the preservation of the Union as sacrosanct, and would not stand for America's Balkanization over the issue of slavery. The South left him no choice.

Al Qaeda in Iraq leaves us no choice as well. As a veteran I feel deeply for the suffering and deaths of our nation's finest. But this is the situation we find ourselves in today in Iraq. Harping on whether or not it was justified in the first place is a moot point. Al Qaeda has chosen this battlefield to make their great stand. And stand and fight we must, like it or not. There are greater issues at stake here. Our survival, for one.

Keep this also in mind: when we retreated from Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident, Al Qaeda was feeling their oats and came at us everywhere, from the first World Trade Center attack to the last. If we retreat from Iraq in similar fashion, who in their right mind really thinks things will get better for us? If you back away from a hungry alligator, does it remain stationary?

After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin famously quipped, " Gentlemen, we must now all hang together, or we shall most certainly hang separately." Jihadis are swarming to Iraq to kill our soldiers there. If our soldiers leave and Al Qaeda is victorious, where do you reasonably think they will swarm next?

A clarification: an insurgent is one who fights a guerilla war on behalf of their fellow countrymen and confronts their enemy head on. A terrorist is one who, for reasons of achieving ultimate power over all, kills anyone who stands in their way, even women and chiildren. Our Founding Fathers were insurgents of the highest order. Those who plant or drive car bombs into crowded marketplaces or into crowds of children seeking free candy are not.

They are terrorists. Terror is the method they use to acquire power and intimidate polulations. And once total power is achieved, terror is the method that is used to maintain and control. This was was the story in pre-9/11 Afghanistan, as well as in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China.

By their actions ye shall know them. So let's cut the term "insurgents," okay? They're not.

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