The "fight or flight" reflex is a natural human response, hardwired into the body. Most of us have at some time or another been confronted by a playground bully, or other such seemingly insurmountable danger that triggered a "fight or flight" reflex. We had to make a choice of conduct. Choosing to stand and fight in spite of our body telling us to run, is one of the ways we gauge courage in people. This same assessment applies to nations of people just as well. When the French rolled over and allowed the Nazi's to assimilate their country, they would hence become labeled as a nation of pacifists. America had been known as a courageous country of indefatigable cowboys. From the brave Frontiersmen and Texas Rangers at the Alamo, to the Marines storming the bloody beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, we taught the world a lesson in courage. The bullies of the world knew that if the ire of the United States were sufficiently taxed, an otherwise peaceful nation would rise up and deal them a crushing blow with overwhelming force and resolve. Not only did the world know this, but every American knew it and was proud of being at the top of the food chain on this planet.

But world opinion changed after Vietnam. And so did the pride and spirit of Americans. We were no longer undefeated. We were mortal and far worse, we were quitters. When confronted by an enemy that would not relent, we chose flight instead of staying to fight. We saved American lives, as those of the anti-war crowd like to brag about, but we lost something much more dear to Americans than life and more importantly, the world would lose it's last greatest crusader for liberty and justice. 

When you proclaim that you stand for something bold like liberty and justice for all, you can't mean so long as it doesn't cost too much. There is no finish line, or last battle for freedom you can retire from. It isn't just because we have a Statue of Liberty that people flock to America by the millions each year. It is because we stand for something dear to all humans, something that makes America bigger than life. And we stand to fight for it when all others look for ways to shrink back. The most inspiring thing anyone can say about the American soldier, is that they run toward evil and they stand to fight, even to defend strangers, when all others run away. When we left Vietnam and the thousands who believed we were a committed shield for them were executed, we committed heresy to this ideal and to our country. We did something everyone knew was very un-American - we quit and we ran because we were afraid to stand and fight, to bear the cost in blood and political capital. But it is the very blood of Americans shed to create this country that was also disgraced. And we are about to do it again. 

The war on terror in our world is elusive and unreal to many Americans. The horror of 9/11 has faded and for many already, it is less important than talk of global warming, fear over a flagging economy, or simply gaining an elected politcal majority. The shrill voice of the anti-war crowd is once again a clarion call to pacifism. Their mantra is that we are merely wasting money and lives in Iraq. They don't appreciate the real cost of turning our backs again and fleeing from the fight. They don't see the fight at their doorstep and so they do not appreciate the dire consequences of the harm we will do to those who believed us again when we told them we would shield them if they would stand and fight with us; to choose freedom over tyranny. They know they will be slaughtered if we abandon them, as we did the Vietnamese. And they are rightly afraid. If we choose flight rather than standing to fight again, no matter the cost, we will seal not only their fate, but that of all future Americans and for trust in the last great beacon of light for freedom and justice in this world. No matter how much you agree or disagree with how we got to Iraq, we cannot turn tail and flee under the guise of prudence. For it is not prudent at all to cast off all that makes Americans truly American. And that is our willingness to stand up for what is right and to fight to the death for that right no matter the cost. If we do not, no one will ever trust America or Americans again and the ultimate price in disgrace and someday in blood, will be more than we can bear. We can never forget that America is the land of the free because of the brave. Tell your friends, your family and your children. And for those who prefer to shrink from a righteous fight, there are plenty of other pacifist countries to live.

Bush has lost the PR war in Iraq. We didn't get the WMD we used as the excuse to legally invade an innocent foreign country and whether or not we're succeeding in democratizing that country as a bonus, we screwed up and should just admit it and make our exit at the first possible opportunity. It doesn't really matter that we were spending billions to keep Saddam neutralized behind his borders and were constantly having to smack down his forces shooting at our pilots - refusing to abide by the no-fly-zone agreed to in the first Gulf War. Forget the fact that the oil-for-food program "sanctions" were not only personally enriching Saddam Hussein and his sons, but also a number of UN oversight committee members as well - not to mention he was trading oil for practically everything he wanted BUT food. I mean you can't eat Yellow Cake Uranium can you?

Nope - George is on the ropes where he belongs because he just couldn't let Iraq alone after 9/11. He couldn't just stay on task to get Bin Laden in Afghanistan and not make the classic military mistake of dividing our forces over two disparate fronts. He's pig headed I tell you. Him and that snooty Rumsfeld probably thought they could get away with killing two birds with one stone - using terrorism and nation sponsors of terrorism as a blank check to knock off the head of Al Quaeda and that cocky little dictator Saddam Hussein who kept laughing while he publicly stuck his finger in the eye of the most powerful nation on Earth. Nope, Texans don't go for that stuff - no way, no how!

Now Saddam Hussein wasn't hurting anybody except his own people right? Why should we care about his chemical weapons attacks wiping out whole villages, hundreds of thousands of people in mass graves, daily maiming and torture of thousands in his gulags? It's lame to attack Saddam because he was harboring terrorists, paying bounties to families of suicide bombers, had never given up on developing WMD and co-incidentally had a pretty significant grudge against the US after his Kuwait invasion was handed back to him as a bunch of smoldering hulks in the desert. Why would that make him want to get even with us? If he did manage to salvage a few warheads with nerve gas, or even had the makings of a nuke, why on Earth would he want to share that with suicidal fanatics who want to kill lots Americans any way they can? After 9/11, why take any of that too seriously?

None of that matters anyway though, because Bush lied! We didn't find WMD so he tricked us all. He's evil and he's not our real President either! Al Gore is our real President! You can bet he wouldn't have attacked Iraq, maybe even the Taliban for that matter. The Taliban didn't ride planes into the Twin Towers! What are we doing attacking them and disrupting their country? They didn't need or want democracy in Afganistan!  

Who are we to stump for democracy in the world anyway when it took a law enforcement act by the Supreme Court to put an end to the bickering about who was our real President? And we still didn't get it right! Because he is the illegitimate-President-George-Bush, he deserves no credit for reformatting two hostile governments into new pro-US democratic nations smack in the center of the Middle East - and on the borders either side of Iran mind you! Now there's a real sponsor of terrorism we need to make sure we send a clear signal to: "We mean business over here fellahs. If you don't stop trying to hoodwink everybody about your uranium refinement for harmless electrical power we'll be knocking on your door next." I mean who seriously believes a country swimming in oil needs nuclear power plants, right? Oh, sorry I forgot. That's what the UN believes and of course all those UN security council members who are helping poor old Iran with equipment for nuclear power. No matter what kind, it's good business and they have a right to profits by gum.

So George Bush, shame on you for attacking Iraq for all the wrong reasons and getting us mixed up in trying to change the balance of power in a region of Earth where dictators hold us hostage to oil and would love nothing more than to see Americans and Jews become extinct. And those Iraqis, they sure don't deserve to be free like Americans anyway. They're too poor and backward to care. So I say we need to pull out and right now! Thank God for people like Murtha and Kerry who know what's really important to Americans. I mean who wants to be sucked into some sort of World War III with Islamic Fascists who only want to kill us because we keep trying to free people from them? We need to applaud the American media too for publishing leaks to our defense plans, inflaming the Middle East against American "occupiers" and getting more of our soldiers killed so we'll all see the Iraq war is just another Vietnam we can't win. We'll all be taught a lesson - never again to be led astray by a rogue US President who forces our soldiers to fight a war just for ego, or oil! By the way, why are those oil prices going up if we're getting it so cheap after conquering Iraq? Better look into that one again for us Michael...

The world markets and many of our liberal friends are nervous about confronting Iran with sanctions, or worse, over their threat of developing nukes. They worry the UN is playing a dangerous game of chicken with Teheran. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In all matters of foreign affairs, there is a time for the pen as well as the sword in hostile negotiations. With democratic countries you rarely even have to show up to the bargaining table with a sword in your scabbard. You're usually there on matters of commercial interests and often the most contentious topic is trade deficits. Still, even the friendliest meeting of foreign leaders proceed more smoothly when it is understood that you are dangerous if crossed. And that you can handily wield either instrument of persuasion.

With countries such as Iran, the sword has to be on the table, unsheathed and within easy reach. The pen is only visible when the concessions required by the majority interests are met and verified. They are not afforded a trusted status in negotiations because they historically break any and all agreements when and where it suits them. They are not allowed to operate behind their borders unsupervised, because they sponsor terrorism, seek regional domination by force and have demonstrated they prefer confrontation to cooperative relations within the world community of free nations. They are an imminent danger to their neighbors and a persistent economic threat outside their neighborhood. They do not play fair in our sandbox and should not be invited in without reparation.

Why is the UN failing to effectively remedy the Iranian threat of nuclear weapons? Isn't the UN supposed to act as the world's referee and hold rogue countries to civility for the rest of us? In an idyllic world yes. But Iran is not in the game with the rest of us. If someone threatened to disrupt your hockey game, you wouldn't sic the refs on them would you? You'd call the cops and they lay some wood on their heads - not just blow whistles and point to the penalty box. You don't scare criminals with whistles.

That's the problem with the UN. They are committed to the philosophy that any negotiation must be resolved with the pen. Like all liberally motivated organizations, they abhor violence and see it as an organizational failure if they cannot resolve any issue with diplomacy. Consequently, they remove all motivation for renegade leaders to take UN actions seriously. They are not dangerous and dangerous regimes would ignore them completely if it were not for member countries like the United States, Britain and on rare occasions, others who provide the teeth for the mouth of the UN. The UN is further castrated by the commercial interests of other countries doing business with Iran and who are all too happy to allow talks to drag on indefinitely. They paralyze the Security Council, stall momentum toward any conflict resolution and reenforce the deserved mockery of UN effectiveness. It should be obvious that many of these countries are not only happy to see the US and Britain drain financial/military resources by committing to force, but it enhances their own agenda to devalue these superpowers' stature in the world community for their own commercial gain. They point them out to be bullies and imperialists in the liberal press - who of course already agree in principal that the world would be better off if the US were put in it's place, probably Britain too and you may as well throw Israel in there with them. By siding with these accusations, they offer their sympathies to Iran along with all the other "underdogs" and improve their potential gain by offering them a market (and all too often a weapons store) alternative. A recent example is Venezuela and Hugo Chavez's pathetic grandstanding to Cuba and now Syria. He is smart enough to see an opportunity to insert himself into world affairs, well above his pay grade, by taking advantage of the current climate of America bashing and fear of "the great Satan" in the Muslim world. He is dumb enough not to realize he is betting his country's economic future on the wrong horse.

Iran needs to be privately taken out to the woodshed and disciplined. Forget finger wagging, idle threats, offers of candy if they will only listen to reason and behave themselves. Corporal punishment and demonstration that there is plenty more where that came from, is the only action Teheran will take seriously. The longer we delay the inevitable, the more we endanger ourselves, embolden their leaders, and coincidentally, other little dogs who think they can wedge in when the big dogs are tied up elsewhere.

Did I hear this right? Israel, surrounded on all sides by terrorist condoning - if not downright sponsoring countries - is supposed to pay any attention to world opinion on how to protect it's own borders? Are we seriously expecting them to curry public opinion to help them explain why they need to protect their citizens from daily rocket attacks fired deep into their territory by anti-semites who would joyfully wipe out every Jewish man, woman and child?

And the United Nations, which is anything but, should remain invested with some sort of authority to condemn Israel, because they won't conduct their battles with "proportionality"? When faced with extinction, what other nation on Earth would worry about killing their enemies with a proportional response to ensure they remain blessed by uninvolved 3rd parties? It appears Israel too has suffered from the deadly disease afflicting America, with the most powerful military on Earth. Before we take any preemptive action to protect our citizens abroad, or even behind our own borders, from terrorists who hide in civilian populations, we have to worry about some deadbeat nation's opinion in the UN concerning our proportional response! Proportional response has come to mean there is some acceptable ratio of civilians killed to eliminate a legitimate military target. Unfortunately, any student of military history will tell you the best proportional response applied when trying to persuade enemies from further attacking you, is to kill or maim as many of their civilians as you can in persistent, relentless displays of overwhelming force. If you get some bad guys in the process, you're really batting a thousand. Now more than ever, when terrorist groups shield themselves amongst civilians (and our hand wringing about potentially killing civilians is the reason they do), the real art of proportional response should be applied liberally!

No one but the news media relish seeing displays of mangled innocents. But, instead of these pictures being used to dissuade public support of a nation's right to defensive military actions, they should better serve as an example of what not to do if you're a civilian; and that is to hang around in areas where terrorists are likely to set up camp. Lebanon is such the classic example of many of it's civilians lending tacit support to Hezbullah. Instead of careful and limited incursions to protect "civilians" and demonstrate a "civilized" proportional response to the world, the IDF would be better served to carpet bomb their way North and drive the terrorists out like rats before a flood so they can kill them in the open for once. If they fight this war, like the true war it is instead of some display of chivalry, the conflict would be over between Sabbaths. And if Hezbullah cries Uncle quickly, a lot of property and innocent lives, they seem all to willing to sacrifice for their cause, could be spared in record time.

And as for Syria and Iran, they seem to forget that if Israel were really pissed off and truly as unconcerned about proportional response as they would be if the roles were reversed, they'd be serving them nukes for breakfast. War is supposed to be horrible. That's why no sane government goes to war if they can help it. But if you're faced with an enemy that doesn't play fair and they want to kill your people by using your weakness against you, all bets should be off.

And as for the UN? We should contribute only enough money to keep that crowd in ample supply of their logo coffee mugs for use in their erudite klatches on conflict resolution.