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A bit from McCain's foreign policy speech:
I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
It is difficult, to say the least, to gainsay a man who has suffered as much from war as Senator McCain, but I dispute the notion - from whatever source - that war has been shorn forever of its glory. Churchill once opined that "war, which had been cruel and glorious, is now cruel and sordid". And so it had become - but mostly because barbarians had entered the fray and the civilized had followed them right down into the barbaric gutter. The civilized have now recovered from that, and now we stand clearly differentiated from our barbaric enemies, and no matter what their outrages, we remember that we are civilized - and thus, glory has returned to war.
Of sadness and death war has no lack - but the young man who volunteered to battle for what is right and who loses his life in defense of all that is decent has not fallen into something sordid, but has risen to a height most of us will never experience in this world. Far from the sacrifices of such men (and women) being incapable of bringing glory to war, it is their very sacrifice which sanctifies the war, and raises it to the highest and noblest of events. Perhaps it is the Christian in me - mindful of how Christ wasn't complete without His glorious Cross - but I just don't wish to live in a world where sacrifice is considered a sad thing. I don't want these young men and women to die; I feel terrible guilt that so many of them have died while I'm safe and dry here at home; but the key to a rational life is to keep joy as the lynchpin of one's worldview, including rejoicing at our calamaties, as they give us the opportunity to rise above narrow self-interest. Many long years ago, a woman penned what is our Battle Hymn of the Republic - I bring up the opening lyrics:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Written by a woman, there is a masculinity - and a joy - in these stanzas very much lacking in our discourse on war these days. Forthrightly, let us go into battle - the serpent still must be crushed, and we must abide the terrible, swift sword. Are we to forever go into battle haltingly? As if we fear it? If so, then I tell you, my fellow Americans, that our wars will be more frequent - and more bloody - than if we had stood to it with courage, and made the proper place for those men and women who do cover themselves in glory, even if they die in the attempt.
War is a terrible thing - but far more terrible is to cease being human; to become a sad, frightened charicature of men and women...people who seem like men and women, but who bear no relation to those genuine men and women of the past who swallowed their fears and went into battle transformed by knowledge of glory and steeled by the joyful knowledge that if they fell, it was for a noble cause, which would not be forsaken, or forgotten.
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Good call. So, when will you be signing up to go "get you some" glory? After all, your words show you are clearly the kind of person who would suffer intense shame if you were to have to sit out noble combat when your heroic brethren are getting their asses shot off while you were waxing Spartan on your Dell. You are a genuine warrior and not just a loudmouth, right?
Posted by: Milo Johnson at March 27, 2008 4:05 PM
You'd think so, Milo, but no, he's just another loudmouth. War is for the "little people," not for noble chickenhawks like Nooners. Like Bush and Cheney, he's content to stand on the sidelines and let other people do the bleeding and dying.
Posted by: Anthony Cartouche at March 27, 2008 4:28 PM
Ahhh....typical nonsensical responses. The old "since you ain't done it you can't talk about it" stance. Let us know when you two grow up, Milo and Tony.
Posted by: Carl at March 27, 2008 9:24 PM
Carl,
Its not big thing - lefties like those two are just ignorant. They don't even understand what I'm talking about, they have no conception of honor, or glory. The words of Rupert Brooke are meaningless to them:
Now, God be thanked Who has matched uswith His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
They don't realise that I make no condemnation of McCain, nor do I call for war - nor do I even think war glorious...but there is glory in war, when your cause is just, and when you are sacrificing yourself for others.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at March 27, 2008 9:27 PM
Only true miscreants find glory in the deaths of others. If death is so glorious, pop a cap in your own cranium, (expletive deleted - please be aware that this is a PG-13 rated blog).
Posted by: Milo Johnson at March 28, 2008 12:55 AM
there is glory in war, when your cause is just, and when you are sacrificing yourself for others.
How would you know?
Posted by: Captain Annoying at March 28, 2008 7:15 AM
Captain,
From personal experience? Not at all - but I was in service...as was my father and grandfather before me. There is a family memory of sacrifice...including a relation who really did entirely use himself up in the service of others...sacrficing his own life for others...there is glory in that.
Posted by: Mark Noonan at March 28, 2008 9:30 AM
Milo,
The glory isn't in death - the glory is in what you are doing which may cause your death. Which way would you rather go - getting hit by a bus, or racing into a burning house to save another?
Posted by: Mark Noonan at March 28, 2008 9:31 AM
There is no glory in war.
Semper Fidelis
Posted by: JD at March 28, 2008 9:48 AM
JD,
Come now, thats not really fair - why do you hold to such a position?
Posted by: Mark Noonan at March 28, 2008 10:03 AM
To believe there is glory in war is to accept propaganda and lies from one's government as truth. Bush's war of terror and occupation of Iraq is no exception as they are both based on deceptions, exaggerations, misdirections, obfuscations, and untruths.
Posted by: JD at March 28, 2008 1:11 PM
JD,
Yeah, whatever...
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