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June 29, 2004 [LINK]

World War II Memorial

WW2Memorial-Atlantic We were up in Northern Virginia for the weekend, and on Sunday I escorted my niece Cathy and her friend Yanira to the brand-new World War II Memorial in Washington, shown in the adjacent photo.

In a way it's too bad that the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis yesterday had to be moved up two days so that terrorsts wouldn't spoil the occasion. Ideally, the process would have followed the script to the letter, but under current conditions that wasn't practical. The recent beheadings committed by the resistance is disheartening, but it also reminds us of those groups' truly hideous, barbaric nature. It also makes more clear all the time that, contrary to what many critics seem to suggest, there was simply no possibility of the West living in peace with the Ba'athist Party or Al Qaeda -- regardless of whether and to what extent they may have been collaborating. Fortunately, there are growing signs that Iraqi people are turning against the terrorists in their midst. Stan Coerr, an Marine Corps Reserve officer who served in Iraq, wrote an eloquent rebuttal to the recent negativism in Strategy Page. It's entitled "No One Asked Us":


I can speak with authority on the opinions of both British and American infantry in that place and at that time. Let me make this clear: at no time did anyone say or imply to any of us that we were invading Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction, nor were we there to avenge 9/11. We knew we were there for one reason: to rid the world of a tyrant, and to give Iraq back to Iraqis. ...
The war was the right thing to do then, and in hindsight it was still the right thing to do. We can't overthrow every murderous tyrant in the world, but when we can, we should. Take it from someone who was there, and who stood to lose everything. We must, and will, stay the course. We owe it to the Iraqis, and to the world.

NOTE: This is a "post facto" blog post, taken from the pre-November 2004 archives.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 17 Sep 2010, 8: 23 PM

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