What’s worth fighting and dying for these days? Liberty? Country? Family? If I were held hostage by neck chopping lunatics, I’d like to believe I’d be heroic enough to urge President Bush to keep fighting in Iraq. I’d do so not because I hate Iraq; I hate tyranny and evil.
Seeing it in my mind, I am brave and strong enough to plead with him not to give in to my murderers and continue to fight for the cause of freedom. And if the fanatics asked me to deny Christ and live, death would be my choice. Of course, I wouldn’t expect the United States to surrender to anyone for any reason.
But imagine if someone you love is being held hostage by maniacs. We have all the proof we need that these “rebels” will cut off heads for sport, with the cameras rolling. Would you demand that we pull out of Iraq to save your loved one? For one American soldier, would you demand we pull out of Iraq?
While the rules of the game don’t change when our emotions are involved, our perceptions do. That’s why I understand the anguish hostage Angelo de la Cruz’s family must be feeling. But I cannot comprehend why Filipinos would prostrate themselves before a bunch of thugs, especially for one man. It’s astonishing. For one, they gave in to Islamic terrorists. Michelle Malkin has a few choice words for her parents’ former countrymen:
The island nation has gone and pulled a Spain (and a France and a Germany). Philippine president Gloria Macagapal-Arroyo has crumbled like a fried lumpia wrapper under pressure from radical Muslim terrorists.
The Battling Bastards of Bataan have given way to the Mollycoddling Milksops of Manila. And ultimately, we — not just Filipinos, but all Americans and our allies battling Islamofascism — will pay a grisly price for this disgraceful capitulation.
(Japan invades the Philippines)
Skye Garcia, writing for the Manila Times:
We have become a nation of cowards and slaves. Instead of resorting to Islam’s law of equal retribution we cringe and crawl like spineless creatures begging mercy from the Iraqi militants, who demand that we reverse our foreign policy to save driver Angelo de la Cruz’s life from an unjustified beheading.
Most of us would say we’d rather die free than live in chains (Right?).
American rebel Patrick Henry considered British encroachment on the colonies unjust and was willing to die for it. In 1775 he uttered these immortal words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
In 1831, slave Nat Turner rebelled and killed whites to break out of chains. Doomed from the start, he was eventually caught and hanged, as were other slaves who attempted to rebel and flee slavery’s misery.
Some people argue that the American Revolution was an unjust war (see Principles of the Just War). But what American in 2004 gives serious thought to the idea that the United States is illegitimate? And slaves were breaking laws on the books by attempting to escape, but how many of us would argue that the laws were just?
Do you believe the war in Iraq is just? What are you willing to die for?
{ 1 comment }
I, too, was initially livid when I heard about what the Philippines army was doing. It was appeasement, pure and simple.
But a closer look at the story shows that the army was in the process of pulling out anyway. The hostage situation was not the reason for the pull-out, but merely sped up the process. They left Iraq a few weeks early to save the life of this man.
Now if they had no plans to leave, then the finger pointing is warranted. But if they merely hustled up the process, well, I can’t argue against that as vociferously.
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