Grim's Hall

On War:

It is time to speak seriously about war.

I am brought to the topic by Kos, who approves of a line being taken by Howard Dean on the topic of the war in Iraq. Kos seems to think that this will prove to be a winning argument:

We've not paid attention to al-Qaida. We've spent $160 billion, lost over 400 servicemen, and wounded and permanently maimed over 2,000 people because we picked the wrong target.

First of all, it may be said that the claim that we've paid no attention to al Qaeda is wrong on its face. The same period has seen a USMC mission against Qaeda targets on the Horn of Africa; the capture of Khalid Shiek Mohammed; allied arrests and prosecutions; continued SOF operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere; and indeed, more "focus" on al Qaeda than can easily be rehearsed. But that is not what bothers me.

What bothers me is this gleeful counting of American war dead. Kos replies to Dean: "Checkmate. And that's beside the fact that we've lost 34 soldiers since Saddam was captured, not ten. (Someone update this guy's notes!)"

Here is my reply:

In this argument, you have drunk yourselves full from the cup of despair. If 400 dead soldiers--heroes and volunteers!--represents failure to you, then there can be no success. America fielded 150,000 troops in this war. In nine months it has lost less than five hundred--less, that is, than one in a hundred of those it deployed onto the field of war. If 99% survival is not acceptable to you, then war is not acceptable to you.

This is no small sacrifice to make. If you will not fight war, you give over to those who will. In a poem to one of the war dead, Lance Corporal Ian Malone--I am told it will be published soon in a volume called Eternal Voices or something like that--I wrote this:

What, one Irish fighting man
to free millions from cold chains?
Not noble words, not gracious plan
could make real such gains.

Or--Is our time so coy,
so wild and free a thing?
Not Harvey nor Kelly, boy
of Killarn, not the Brian King

Freedom bought at such a cost,
where glory's priced so steep:
Where the name of each good man lost
Can memory's Herald keep.

It is still true. Of old, men memorized epics: even the Iliad. Should our foes succeed in killing three times as many of our soldiers as they have done, so that 2,000 Coalition men lie dead in Iraq, yet one man who wished could remember their names. He could, if he devoted himself, remember their names, their ranks, and something of the history of their units. It lies within the power of the human mind.

And for this sacrifice, we have achieved something that passes human power to estimate. Three hundred thousand dead! And their widows and their children, and the fear in the night. It is gone, on the winds of morning. It is gone, forever.

Run against that? You fools, you cowards, you children of cold hearts. If this is a winning argument, we deserve destruction. We are no longer fit to bear the sword, for we have not the courage to lift it.

But it is not so. We do remember the strength of old steel.

De Oppresso Liber.