By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
July 2, 2003
On Monday I received pictures of an American Army ambulance that had been hit by rocket propelled grenade a couple of weeks ago killing one corpsman, along with the question: “What the heck are we still doing there!!?”
What are we still doing there? We are introducing an entire region of the world to the blessings of liberty. As we approach Independence Day, the question reminds me of the price Americans paid for liberty. While Iraq was liberated from an oppressive dictator in a matter of weeks, so far at the cost of fewer almost 200 Americans have been killed in action, far more were killed in America's own battles for liberty against a tyrant in England 227 years ago.
A year before, on June 17, 1775 the first major battle of the Revolution was waged in Boston, Massachusetts on Bunker and Breed Hill between the American patriots, with no commander-in-chief and unified only in a desire for liberty, and the well trained, armed and seasoned British professional army. Nearly 14,000 Americans spontaneous had gathered to defend Boston. General Gage, the commander of a larger number of British troops, confident the motley patriots would not dare fight his seasoned troops declared martial law for the City and demanded that the patriots surrender their weapons.
And, there were a few who actually surrendered their weapons. However, the night of June 16th, a band of 1000 patriots quietly climbed the up hill overlooking the harbor where the British troops slept in their ships and built crude fortifications in preparation for a battle with the Kings Army. At dawn they were discovered, and a force of about 3000 British soldiers attacked. Twice the red-coated British troops were repulsed, but, in the end, the patriots ran out of ammunition and were forced to retreat. Four hundred and fifty Americans, out of the one thousand who had defended the hill 450 were killed and over twelve hundred of the British soldiers died.
During the ensuing eight years of fighting, from 1775 to 1783, with the total American population at about 2.1 million, ten percent of them, 217,000 of them, fought in the war. Of that number, 2% of them, or 4,435 American patriots died. That was .2% of America’s population at the time.
Was it worth it? Or, should the Americans have just surrendered their guns that day in Boston and knuckled under to King George III? Most Americans still believe liberty is worth dying for. But gaining and keeping liberty is never easy.
As Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pointed out Monday, after the American Revolution, the United States went through pretty much the same situation we are now seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, most Americans today know so little history that they are not aware of what DID happen following the American Revolution and are easy prey for the alarmists. Rumsfeld said,
“As we celebrate our liberty, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on the challenges that our country faced in its early years. It was a period of chaos and confusion. Our revolution was followed by a serious commercial depression. Britain's colonial ports were -- in the West Indies were closed to ships flying the American flag. There was rampant inflation and no stable currency.
“Discontent led to uprisings, such as the Shays Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings. In 1783 demobilized soldiers from the Continental Army surrounded the statehouse in Philadelphia, demanding back pay. Congress fled for more than six months, meeting in Princeton, Trenton and finally Annapolis, to avoid angry mobs.
“Our first attempt at a governing charter, the Articles of Confederation, failed, in a sense. It took eight years before the Founders finally adopted our Constitution and inaugurated our first president.
“That history is worth remembering as we consider the difficulties that the Afghans and the Iraqis face today. The transition to democracy is never easy. Coalition forces drove Iraq's terrorist leaders from power, but unlike traditional adversaries that we've faced in wars past, who sign a surrender document, hand over their weapons, the remnants of the Ba'ath regime and the Fedayeen death squads faded into the population and have reverted to a terrorist network. We are dealing with those remnants in a forceful fashion, just as we have had to deal with the remnants of al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and tribal areas near Pakistan.
“Those battles will go on for some time. The liberation of Iraq is complete; the regime has been removed from power and will not be permitted to return. But our war with terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the globe continues. It will not be over any time soon. As Jefferson taught us two centuries ago, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
In the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war approximately 1.5 million people died. Yet, I don’t remember a single anti-war protest during those years. I don’t remember any headlines in American papers about the horror of one Muslim nation attacking another Muslim nation and killing a million of its people. The media pretty much ignored the whole thing; it becoming an issue only when they learned Ronald Reagan may have tried to help the Iranians who were being slaughtered by Saddam Hussein.
They also criticized George H. Bush in 1991 for “getting involved” when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Most of the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, terrorism directed at American embassies, airplanes and people was largely ignored, while huge amounts of oil money went into financing and arming suicide bombers, airplane hi-jackers and even the first attack on the World Trade Center.
Then, in 2001, a few months after a new president was inaugurated, deadly and well organized attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the foiled effort to attack some other landmark – the White House or the Capital – took place on 9-11.
Why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan? We are there to stop people from attacking or paying for attacks on America. As a bonus, we are doing what Moses did in Egypt thousands of years ago. We freed some slaves.
I doubt that it will take 40 years for the Afghans and the Iraqis to get the hang of freedom, but it might take as long as it did for the Americans to do so.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com