Is America Getting Too Soft?

I'm wondering now if there will soon come a time when we as nation will say to the terrorists, "Okay, you win." And then what? That will certainly be a dark day for the United States - that is, if we continue to exist.

Border Incursion into Arizona [link to story]

We have had National Guard troops from various states stationed along the border with Mexico. This is meant to discourage illegal immigration and smuggling into the U.S. Early this month, an armed band of gunmen crossed the border into Arizona. No shots were fired, but the National Guard troops did withdraw from the area. Despite having up to 6000 troops on the border, they have authorization to engage anybody.

Excuse me? This is something we should be very concerned about. This act of agression was no less than an armed invasion of U.S. soil, and yet we have rules of engagement that do nothing to protect the integrity of our border, and are probably designed more to appease the ACLU. Even the Palestinians - outgunned and outmaneuvered - fight back whenever the IDF makes an incursion into their territory. These invaders have no honorable intent, and every effort should be made in capturing them or eliminating them if they don't cooperate, even to the point of calling in airstrikes if it comes to that (there are two Air Force bases and a Marine Corps air station in Arizona).

The last time this country had a border incursion was when Pancho Villa raided New Mexico. We dealt with it then; we need to deal with it now.

Iraq

What can I say that I haven't already? It sounds like we're ready to give up in Iraq, just like we did in Vietnam - and look what they've had to endure.

We justified our invasion of Iraq by stating they possessed weapons of mass destruction. Despite the reports from the press who would have you believe we found none, we have found them. No, not stadium-fulls. But caches have been found and documented. You don't need a lot of mustard gas to kill a lot of people. Saddam had plenty. And remember, he was executed for killing a mere fraction of his own people.

Lots of innocent people continue to lose their lives in Iraq, and the people losing those lives typically are civilians - those Iraqis trying to live a decent life - and those who have travelled a long way to help the Iraqis (but not the UN - they bailed out, remember?). How many combatants have been killed? Very few in comparison to those innocent bystanders.

There is no victory in Iraq unless we buckle down. Our enemies are those who don't fight with honor. They target the weak so that we will lose our will to fight. If we abandon Iraq, we are just as dishonorable as those we are fighting. The honorable thing to do is to eliminate that enemy and demand no less than unconditional surrender.

Some History

The Declaration of Independence was not a slam-dunk; the Revolutionary War continued for more than five years after that. The British were the odds-on favorite to win, and they nearly did. There would have been no defeat with honor for the thirteen colonies; the fight for liberty would have been over. And those who had signed the Declaration of Independence would have been signing their own death warrants.

But America did prevail, for the will to fight for liberty was stronger than whatever the mighty British Empire (argueably the greatest nation on the planet at that time) could throw at them.
When the American Civil War broke out, many on both sides believed it would be over quickly. Although outmanned, outgunned, and outmaneuvered by the Union, the Confederacy displayed a tenacity unlike any combatant in all of history, and at times it appeared they could actually win the war. Instead of a brief war with few casualties, the American Civil War was a drawn-out, ferocious ordeal that lasted four years and was one of the most dealy, second only to World War II.

President Lincoln had to deal with generals in the field that, for whatever reason, were not getting the job done. Even by the summer of 1864, the war was not going well for the Union. There was not only a question of whether Lincoln would re-elected - there was even a question of whether we would be re-nominated! Finally by autumn, the Confederacy had been delivered some crushing blows deep in the South. Lincoln was re-elected (his chief oppenent being one of the generals he had fired) and the Union juggernaut by this time could not be stopped. By April the war was over.

Do the Math

Here are some statistics from American history's more deadly moments

Battle of the Bulge

16 Dec 1944 - 25 Jan 1945

19,276 killed
Hurricane of 1900, Galveston TX

8 September 1900

6,000 - 12,000 killed
Battle of Gettysburg

1-3 July 1863

7,863 killed
Guadalcanal Campaign

7 Aug 1942 - 9 Feb 1943

7,099 killed
Earthquake/Fire, San Francisco

18 April 1906

3,000 - 6,000 killed
Battle of Antietam

17 September 1862

3,654 killed
Battle of Shiloh

6-7 April 1862

3,477 killed
Battle of Iwo Jima

19 Feb - 26 Mar 1945

6,140 killed
Iraq War

23 Mar 2003 - 13 Jan 2007

3,019 killed (so far)
Terrorist Attacks - New York/Washington/Pennsylvania

11 September 2001

2,973 killed
Hurricane - Lake Okeechobee FL

16 September 1928

2,500+ killed
Attack on Pearl Harbor

7 December 1941

2,335 killed
Hurricane Katrina

29 August 2005

1,836 killed
Battle of Normandy (first day - D-Day - only)

6 June 1944

1,465 killed

Conclusion

We Americans tend be an impatient bunch. In our fast-moving society, we want results now - and if we can't get the results we want, then to heck with it.

After 9/11, I remember how proudly we Americans flew our flags. I remember how we Americans put yellow ribbons on our cars as our troops set off to make things right. Nowadays our cars are festooned with ribbons of all colors. Don't get me wrong - some of these causes are great - but why do others warrant their own ribbon? And what about the flags? Where have they all gone?

So here we are in America in 2007. We sip our Starbucks coffees, pump cheap gasoline (yeah, it could be much worse!), satisfy our materialistic urges with goods made in China, wait for tech support from a call center in India, and wonder what Britney Spears is up to (as if she were important). Where would we be if all those were gone?

The generation before mine tells stories of the Great Depression and how they sacrificed much just to survive. I often wonder if the generations after mine would even know how to cope with something like a Great Depression or a desperate global war. And I gotta ask you: Is America getting too soft?