What if?
September 17, 2007
Update: 9/17 Andre’ read this post and the comments on the air today. It is on after her intro – enjoy! Boy do you guys sound smart!
Update 9/14 6 PM: my call into Andre’ Trevigne discussing the war. Scroll just shy of the half mark. I respect her so much and am a regular guest on her show now – this is the first time I have ever countered her and debated her on anything serious. I definitely am not the most eloquent and knowledgeable speaker when it comes to the war and politics – but I think I somehow got my thoughts across. Anyways – I thought it tied into this post nicely. For more about her click here.
Update: too good to let the comments and questions go by so quickly. Keep it going!
What if the people who originally thought the war was was the right plan of action, continued to support it?
What if the American people demanded we stay the course until the mission was complete?
What if the terrorists knew that the will of the American people was united and would not rest until their heads were served on a platter?
What if the lives of soldiers was jeopardized because they were being used as political pawns?
What if politicians who actually voted to send soldiers off to war, stuck by their decision – for better or worse?
What if the media supported the war efforts?
What if angry anti-war people used their energy to actually help soldiers and their families?
What if we get attacked again on our own soil?
What if you realized today that your personal attitude and efforts can make the job of a soldier much easier?
What if we lose?
What if we win?
What if you were putting your life on the line for a group of people that thought you weren’t doing a job worth doing?
What if someone was standing behind you second-guessing your every move, every second of the day?
What if you were in a soldier’s shoes?
Posted in 9/11, Afghanistan, America, Big Media, Congress, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Military, Politics, This & That, al-Qaeda, army, military spouse
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September 12th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
What a great series of questions.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am
If > then:
Then the war would be won and over already, if the Left didn’t drag it out longer by opposing and second-guessing everything that’s done to fight it.
September 13th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Beth, are you honestly saying that if the American people would just get behind this war we would have won already? I disagree. Our military has been given an incredibly difficult mission and they are performing superbly under the harshest conditions. What we see today in Iraq is not a function of U.S. public support but rather a confluence of many complex factors including bad decisions made by the current administration, sectarian divisions and a determined and elusive enemy.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:40 am
“What if” we had done the logical thing and concentrated our efforts in Afghanistan and caught Bin Ladin? “What if” the Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld et.al. had listened to COS General Shinseki instead of pushing him aside? “What if” anyone paid attention to Gen. Colin Powell’s admonition, “You break it-you own it”? History is a succession of ‘what ifs”…..
September 14th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Great post Greta!
September 14th, 2007 at 11:27 am
These are my opinions…I stand behind them, I will not argue their points, nor will I debate them….I am giving them because Greta took the time to ask them….Thank you Greta for taking the time to pose these very important questions……a friend of mine also read them and her answers were very close to mine, same ideas, different wording…..
It never hurts to look at the WHAT IFS…..in life…..sometimes they can give us perspective into things we may not have thought about before…..and provide avenues of change……….
1. What if the people who originally thought the war was was the right plan of action, continued to support it?
*Use history as your guide…..the only War effort we lost in the last Century was the one not supported…..whether our winning this one or not would have happened already I can not fortell…There were mistakes made in the beginning, the one that will forever stick out in my head was General Shinseki’s testimony about the troop strength needed after the invasion…it should have never been dismissed as being “wildly off the mark”… But when you lack the support of your Nation, you are fighting an unwinnable war from home in the way of undermining the moral of your soldiers, and giving the enemy what they want……a way in from the inside. Those that began this war, should be the ones continuing to support it and finish it, regardless of it’s popularity…..or their constituants….they use the “I can’t do any good if I’m not reelected” speech to justify their flip flopping….well, I don’t buy into it and have never voted for a politician who changed position mid stream without a good reason for it….
2. What if the American people demanded we stay the course until the mission was complete?
*This is a hard question for a spouse of a soldier to answer, the spouse says I want my husband home, I’m tired of him being gone…but the American in me, the mother of three says, yes WE STAY, we complete this mission, for not completing it means that one day, we will fight this fight here…on our land, in our home, and my children or grandchildren may not have the luxury of living in a world where freedom is a given……we stay or run the risk of losing what our forefathers promised us…..LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS……FREEDOM!
3. What if the terrorists knew that the will of the American people was united and would not rest until their heads were served on a platter?
*I think they would think twice about their course of action….they would be afraid to take us on….but our actions over the last 20 years have proven to them that we no longer are the country we were in the 40′s…..we are too into ourselves….self absorbed…..we are not watching our backs anymore, we are watching TV, video games……we are a country that has lost it’s family morals and in doing so…….the terrorists know they can chip away at our foundations and they have done so……and will continue to do so because we have lost our RESOLVE!
4. What if the lives of soldiers was jeopardized because they were being used as political pawns?
*Um…..what do you mean WHAT IF….this already is a GIVEN!
5. What if politicians who actually voted to send soldiers off to war, stuck by their decision – for better or worse?
*WAR is a fact of life, look throughout history……you do not commit to war to then back out because it became unpopular…….it is not a popularity contest…..stand by your convictions…..if you are going to commit to placing soldiers in harms way, then YOU SUPPORT YOUR SOLDIERS NO MATTER WHAT….SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES….you do not back away from that….to do so once again undermines what our country has been built on.
There are 3 rules of war….RULE 1 ~ Young Men and Women die in War. RULE 2 ~ You can not change Rule #1. RULE 3 ~ Someone has to walk the point….. THIS WILL NEVER CHANGE!
6. What if the media supported the war efforts?
*Well that would be nice….but until the FCC changes it’s regulations, I don’t see that happening…but if it did, the American people would see the good being done in Iraq, they would not go around touting that those of us who talk up the good are liars…..
7. What if angry anti-war people used their energy to actually help soldiers and their families?
*What a wonderful world this would be…….these people need to be committed to a nice white padded cell somewhere on an island somewhere…..Freedom of speech protects them, but what it fails to do is protect those it hurts. If they used half their energy to help instead of hinder, we could actually get alot of programs for the families and soldiers working better…..negative energy only hurts….
8. What if we get attacked again on our own soil?
*I believe it will be much worse then 9/11 was….but American’s think it can’t happen…..that it was an isolated incident, since nothing has happened since. They could not live in their nice world if they had any idea of how much gets stopped every day in our Nation……they would never believe it…..and when it happens again, I did not say if…because someday it will……..it will be too late to go back and say “should have, could have, wished we’d have”……
9. What if you realized today that your personal attitude and efforts can make the job of a soldier much easier?
*I know my attitude makes it easier….I talk to my husband enough, to his soldiers and their famlies enough to know what my attitude can do to make things easier or harder……postitivity makes their life and their jobs so much easier…..and the negativity….not only harder, but like it’s not appreciated or worth it to them to risk their lives for YOU!
10. What if we lose?
*We Can’t lose, we are not afforded that option. To lose would put us on a course that would change our world to one where the lives we so freely live could ultimately end with us losing that Freedom or be in grave danger every day of actually losing our lives……
~What if we win?
*We set a precident that our Nation is what we stand for…ONE NATION UNITED! UNITED UNDER GOD! Our Colors do not Run, they stand for Freedom, every service member in our Armed Forces risks their lives for little pay to ensure that……
11. What if you were putting your life on the line for a group of people that thought you weren’t doing a job worth doing?
*I’d continue to do it, just as my husband has for the last 20 years….Honor, Duty, Courage of Conviction…..it’s who he is……The Warrior Ethos……
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
12. What if someone was standing behind you second-guessing your every move, every second of the day?
*I’d have to ask God to forgive them for their inablity to Understand that the job I was doing required me to make tough hard decisions that placed young men and women in harms way…..but that was my job……
13. What if you were in a soldier’s shoes?
*I was at one time…..NOW I STAND BEHIND ONE!
September 14th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Bravo Soldiers’ Wife. I agree with you 100%. GMTA!
September 14th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
A Soldier’s Wife Says: we complete this mission, for not completing it means that one day, we will fight this fight here…on our land, in our home,
But you also state that another attack on our soil is inevitable. If this is true then “fighting them over there†has no effect on whether we confront them here. Certainly a compelling case can be made for staying in Iraq, but this is not one of them.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Greta: That was a really good post, and a really good set of questions.
Clearly, we who are in favor of victory need to make our voices heard.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Greta, you did a great job!
Correct me if I’m wrong but it sounded to me like you agreed with Andre’ that while it’s important everyone support and respect soldiers, that does not mean we can’t have a dialogue over here about why we are in Iraq and how long we will be there.
September 14th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I do agree with her on many things Silke. She also changes her thoughts a bunch over that hour with what she believes. She is a good talk show host that way:) NOt that I really think she changes her mind – but she does agree when it makes sense to her.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Great list of questions.
The Left’s answer manual to all of those questions:
a) It doesn’t matter because Bush lied and people died.
b) Big Oil and Haliburton are in a conspiracy to take all the oil from Iraq.
c) *deranged screaming and intermittent drooling*
d) Soldiers are uneducated and were duped into enlisting/just air-raiding villages and killing innocent civilians/not doing anything productive…(do these sound familiar?)
They just pick a letter and start ranting, whether it makes sense or not.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Wow, it’s so surreal to hear the blog being read on a radio show. One comment though: Andre’ incorrectly stated that “Hooah†is a Marine expression. Not true. I think she must have meant Hoorah (which is from the Marines). Hooah is all Army!
September 19th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
[...] This post is getting a lot of discussion on Hooah Wife and my husband says it is his all time favorite post. So I had to share. [...]
September 20th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I have to say that I just wrote a sort of answer to all of those questions yesterday. I talked about how we are now a country that can ignore a war and not even know a single person involved in it. In generations past the war was all anybody talked about because it affected your everyday life. I wont go into everything I said but talk to the WWII generation, study up on wars and not the politics of it but the way it effected the everyday life of civilians. I think we could change things if we all stood together, there is power in numbers after all.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Hooah, hi I am Sarge Charlie and I will be following you on VA Joe, that is a tough job since I read the post. It is so good and so to the point.
After reading you post I saw the following comment and responded from my point of view. I look forward to reading your blog in days to come.
Comment by vstar-guy
September 19, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
What if you boarded the wrong train and learned that you were going in the opposite direction that you wanted to go to?
But you stayed on the train because you would be too embarassed to correct the situation by getting off of the train and getting on the correct train.
You would end up many miles from your desired location and you would have to trek way back to where you wanted to go in the first place. Now lets assume that your wrong way trip is costing American lives every day. And lets further assume that the loss of American lives would end at the time when you finally get to the location you wanted to go to in the first place!
#
Comment by Sarge_Charlie
September 20, 2007 @ 10:59 am
What if you take your train back to Vietnam in 1975, enjoy yourself as you watch 3 million Vietnamese try to escape by boat, with an estimated 25% that will die at Sea.
Your next stop on your train should be the Reeducation Camps for those who did not take the boat, an estimated 1 million people were sent to be reeducated, tortured, and estimated 100,000 die.
Then take the train to “The Killing Fields of Cambodia,†while your train is stopped please entertain your self by watching the execution of 2.3 million people.
Yes sir, what if your train is going in the wrong direction, simply turn around and finish what the hell you started, otherwise you will have new places to visit, have a nice day.
Sarge Charlie
September 20th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
[...] When The Old Sarge made his first post on VA Joe I read the last post submitted by a new friend, HOOAH WIFE AND FRIENDS. Her post was titled WHAT IF? I was impressed with the post because it was so simple and so much to the point, stop in and read the post and you will understand what I am talking about. The sad part is a comment left on the post, well written but obviously a member the Quitters Club following the lead of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A man that believes our soldiers are not good enough to win in Iraq. [...]