You Ain't Gonna Like Losing

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq.

Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.

Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out, the people came together, rallied behind and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not. And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today.

Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But the people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty.

Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war. Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in.

Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort. Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military.

Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap to butter & sugar was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted. [Ted Williams, Jimmie Stewart and Mickey Rooney come to mind. Julia Child served with the OSS, and Audrey Hepburn as a child was a courier for WWII resistance fighters in Holland. Here's a list of more actors who also served, and game-show host Wink Martindale has a tribute page on his web site to Real Hollywood Heroes.]

And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a pledge of allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being "tortured" by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning. [Don't we long for those days when journalists understood their sense of responsibility? "Journalism" does not mean blabbing every detail you know about.]

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.

It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the land of Oz. (We even have the wicked witch of the west as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.)

We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.

We are in grave danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.

It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists' cause . . . Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.

We either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing!