There is a difference in war today. In the previous century 426,664 American fighting men and women died defending freedom, In the century before that it was 188,972 souls lost for the freedom we have today, and in the 40 years prior to that we see 4435 plus or minus, let’s face it, record keeping wasn’t what it is today.

That’s the first thing we should keep in perspective while we move forward.

Next comes the “who attacked who” scenarios. We here all the time that Iraq never attacked America so we should not be there fighting. Ok, let’s look at history and see how many times we have been attacked and how we handled each case.

Revolutionary War - 4,435 dead.

Can we really say we were attacked? I mean technically it was still His Majesties land and we were living on it by his grace alone; his grace and our taxes.

What was gained from this war? Only our independence.

War of 1812- 2,260 dead.

The U.S. started this little squirmish by invading Canada of all places, and we got our asses handed to us trying that at the time. But still we were the aggressor and eventually we won it. What was gained from this war? Land. 

The Mexican American War – 1,733 dead.

Well again we see we were not attacked. Mexico was still upset by the Texan situation and “Manifest Destiny” was rearing its head at this time too. We tried twice to buy the land from Texas to California from Mexico but they refused to sell, so a war of aggression followed. What was gained from this war? Land.

Civil War – 184,594 dead.

Who was the aggressor here, the Americans or the Americans? Let’s not waste a lot of time discussing this one; we all know it was the Americans who started it. What was gained from this war? Restoration of our land and Freedom for Blacks Americans.

The Spanish American War- 385 dead.

Starting with the sinking of the USS Maine which we now believe was an accident the Americans waged a war of aggression against Spain to stop her domination of the Caribbean.  But was the Maine an accident or a plot as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor were? The world might never know, but we went to war over it. What was gained from this war? Land, Islands actually and a safer sea.

World War I- 53,513 dead.

Again we see that nobody attacked the United States directly, but again we entered a foreign war. What was gained from this war? 53,513 dead and over 300,000 injured. Oh, and Freedom for Western Europe, literally millions of people were saved by our entering the war, but there was no direct threat to the United States, yet we got involved.

World War II- 292,131 dead.

Japan attacked us. Ok, one were we didn’t start it. Wait, Germany never attacked us, so why did we go after her? Our friends were getting their asses handed to them; that’s why. And what was gained from this war for America? 292,131 dead and over 900,000 injured. Using what the left does today, this is what we won. But in actuality we won freedom for millions around the world, not just in Western Europe but throughout the Pacific and even in Africa.

Korean War- 33,561 dead.

Again, we didn’t get attacked by North Korea, but there we were when our interests or more to the fact, the interests of our friends were being threatened. What did American gain from this war? 33, 651 dead and over 150,000 injured, and the establishment of the DMZ.

Vietnam War- 47,369 dead.

Hate to point it out, but we didn’t get attacked here either. Again we find that the United States launched a war of aggression to protect what our friends the French were losing. What did we gain from this war? A wall 1/10 the size of the one the Vietnamese would have to build to list all their dead and 47,369 dead men and women.

Afghan/Iraq Wars - Approx. 3400 dead between the two. 3098 in Iraq as of 2/4/07 and 296 in Afghanistan as of 1/31/07. Most current dead tolls I could find on line.

In contrast we have fought for much less than we are fighting for now. Land, peaceful seas, helping a friend who can’t defend their own property. Today we fight those who attacked us in Afghanistan on 9/11 and we fight to free those held under the tyrannical foot of a dictator with a history of aggression to both his own people and his neighbors. To date we have sacrificed only a small percentage of those 426,664 men and women who died preserving the principals of our forefathers in the last century.

Every life is important, and these men and women are the very best of what America has to offer the world, people willing to lay down their life for the life of a brother on this planet. They see no race, creed, religion or color; they defend those who need defending from those wanting to take life from them.

But here in Iraq as in Afghanistan we have launched a war of aggression just as we have in the past during almost every war we have ever been involved in, so stop acing like it is a new thing for America. The Taliban did not attack us, nor did Iraqi’s but we are there fighting under the same principals we have always fought under, those being the protection of the weak, the defense of the defenseless and the destruction of the Evil ones.

Those on the left speak only of the evil we have inflicted in this war, but we have been doing this evil in this manner since the second war we entered. It has been only on the rarest of occasions that America has waited to be hit before entering into a war. Only once that history shows us have we had the “right” to fight under the interpretation of the left. But “RIGHT” we were to enter those other wars, and “RIGHT” we were to enter this one.

Like it or not, we are the only ones capable of bringing to a close the wars of the future through the destruction of those who would wage war against us. Right through might is the only thing many of these Tin Horn Dictators understand, and it is a message we need to deliver with swift and exacting execution of our armed forces.

So continue to see only the evils of war, as there are plenty, and continue to hear only the evils of war, as they too are plentiful but remember before speaking the evils of war, that our men and women are there defending your right to see it, hear and say it. Then before laying your head down that night, offer up a prayer for the souls of all those 623,000 plus who have gone to sleep for the last time defending you and your right to descent.

You just might find that the good has outweighed the bad and always does.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t descent if you really feel this war is wrong, on the contrary. I believe that it is the right of all free Americans to do so. But I would ask you to think along with your feelings. Thinking sometimes takes you away from the emotions and allows you to see the bigger picture. And for those of you who will want to ask, no I do not agree with the way this war has been fought, the low death tolls tell a tale of a lack of engagement and a restriction by policy from civilians over a military designed to “kill people and break things”. (Rush Limbaugh first coined this term on his radio show years ago and it seems the most accurate I have ever heard of what our military is designed to do) It is obvious that the civilian leadership as mismanaged this war and that victory is going to be elusive so long as they run it, but they are what we have to work with at the moment and no amount of investigation is going to change that fact at this time.

But what would I know; I’m just an Average American.