1 week Ago By Jerry Agar
Article content “What does it feel like to send young people into harm’s way?” I asked that question to then United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The United States was at war in Iraq and as a talk radio host for KMBZ, Kansas City, I had been invited to a media day inside the Pentagon. That building is a five sided donut with a pleasant park in the middle.
Talk radio shows were set up at tables throughout, broadcasting back home, with access to interviews with Rumsfeld, Richard Meyers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other dignitaries. As we pass the marking of Remembrance Day, I can’t help but remember that day and the fact that when armies go to war, someone sends them. Too many individuals don’t come back.
Does that weigh on the senders? Rumsfeld began with a political answer about why the U.S. was in Iraq.
I interrupted him. “Excuse me Mr. Secretary, I wasn’t looking for a political answer.
What does it feel like?” His hands began to shake. His face changed from that of a statesman selling the administration’s position to one of pain, I thought. He told us of his visit that morning to a hospital to spend time with injured soldiers and in some cases their parents.
He talked of sacrifice made because of a sense of duty and because their country asked. After a bit he slapped his shaking hands on the table and said, “That’s it.” He got up and walked away.
I broke for commercials. “Back after this.” A young woman with a clip board hustled over to me.
“Don’t tell people you made the secretary of defense cry,” she said. I replied, “I will absolutely tell people that, and it is a good thing.” John Stuart Mill said, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.” What do soldiers think is worth war? The freedom and peace to follow for those they love; for the country they love. They love that country for the people that make it up.
The ones they know and love and the ones they will never meet yet whom they deem worthy as fellow human beings of a life free of despots, dictators, and terrorists. We have lived with no war on our soil for so long we take that peace and freedom for granted. That tranquility is threatened now with chants of death to Canada and bullets through the windows of a Jewish girl’s school, on more than one occasion.
People gather in Canada to celebrate and mourn the death of terrorist leaders who wish the total destruction of not just the Jews, but Western society. The sad history of human existence is that eventually the regular, law abiding, good people of the country will need people in uniform. Our comfort can be in part that those people, from those with boots on the ground to the planners and senders, will come if it should be necessary.
They tremble, as did Rumsfeld, but they come. “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Increasingly, some of them are rough women.
God Bless them all..
