The American Spectator

p> REINVENTING THE WHEEL br> Re: Christopher Orlet’s War Eternal : /p>

If debate is the purpose of Christopher Orlet’s “War Eternal,” then I too will state that I have no easy answers but I’m willing to continue this debate. The premise is that we’ve evolved, become too moral, too civilized, too humane to win wars. Comparisons were drawn to World War II, surmising that if excessive media coverage had taken place back then, we’d have lost our appetite for war upon seeing the results of the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings.

That argument, if true, would indeed be a great philosophical debate but I see things differently. Our country is on no higher ground of moral evolution now than then (reference the statistic in Doug Bandow’s article, posted the same day as Orlet’s, about 45 million murders of unborn infants since Roe v. Wade before telling me how much more civilized we are today). The issue at hand isn’t our morality, it’s our backbone. We haven’t gained humanitarian high ground, we’ve lost calcium from our spinal columns.

My father wouldn’t have been swayed by the plight of Japanese civilians during the war (aside from the fact that he was serving in combat with our Navy and had other things on his mind) because he understood the importance of victory and had the fortitude to push forward. That didn’t diminish his moral character. In fact, it probably added to it by demonstrating that the proliferation of evil requires untold sacrifices to stop it, and those sacrifices will more likely be made by men of high moral standing than by those at the low end.

Today we’re too eager to only push forward with lives of luxury that were unimaginable a half century ago and the slightest interruption will get many of us to fold rather than hold. The agony of seeing those poor war refugees (wherever they are) is too much for us to bear, so please end this conflict and let us return to normal. Otherwise, we may end up with higher gas prices, travel delays, or more unpleasant news stories. Then we’ll start worrying about things we’d prefer to be ignorant of.

p>The problem isn’t one of empathy for those trapped in a war zone, it’s one of inconvenience for those trapped in a comfort zone. It just sounds nicer when you say it the other way. br> — Tom Cook br> Raleigh, North Carolina /p>