War and Morality Part 3

Now, boy, remember this. Your grandfather is pro-victory when it comes down to whether or not I support a war. Never doubt that regardless of what you hear me say. But it isn’t because I think war is just or moral. Wars can only be called a necessary evil. Your grandfather supports it because, in losing a war, there are consequences that we, as a nation, we as a people, cannot afford to pay.

One of those consequences is the loss of respect of any potential and future enemy may have for our military power and strength. And when we lose the respect of the enemy that makes us very vulnerable to attack. The reason being is that they will see that loss as a sign of weakness and think that if some one can claim victory over us then they can also.

This may have been one of the reasons we had a cold war instead of a hot war with the U.S.S.R., mutual respect of each other's military power. We are at war now because we lost the respect of our enemy. Osama bin Laden made this abundantly clear many times.

Another consequence is the loss of confidence that we must have from our allies. This is especially true when we are speaking of those allies who need to depend upon us for their own national security and safety from those who would impose their will upon them. And there will always be those who will prey upon the weak. And if we are to be looked upon as being the strong then we dare not let them down. We dare not turn our backs to them as they cry out for help. We dare not allow ourselves to be perceived as unwilling to confront those who would do so as Hussein must have thought as he invaded Kuwait.

But most of all we must honor those who have chosen to fight for that victory. For that be their only goal, victory. They did not go into battle to lose. They did not stand as their friends fell in battle so that they may come home as losers. They did not go into battle so that when they came home they will come home feeling as if they failed their country, failed their families, failed themselves. And only victory can prevent this.

Tis the support we give those gallant men in regards to their quest that is the food of their souls, the drink to lift their spirits. For it be our support for those men so brave that will make them proud men, men never given a reason to know shame, men never to know doubt of who or what they be. They may go into war as boys but each will come home as men.

And those who have died in this quest, they will not have died in vain. For they will be remembered by both, foe and friend. It will be those that died that the foe will remember when he thinks we are weak, then thinks again. It will be those who died that the friend will remember as he knows his own new found freedom. It will be those who died that will be remembered as the instruments of peace.

'Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.'
Apocrypha

Truth, my boy, can be a very strange phenomenon. It may even appear to be self-contradictory. And wars seem to point this fact out very vividly. For it uses acts of evil to bring about a conclusion of good. And we can only declare that it be necessary but the truth."

Upon hearing this I knew why grandpa was such a ferocious defender of the war. And, in my eyes, he had just grown a foot taller.