The Highway.com

In weeks past, I have spoken out against what I consider an unjust incursion into a third world country that had no involvement with the terrorist attack on our soil. I argued that we were acting like a lynch mob looking for somebody to hang for the atrocity committed against us on 9/11. Iraq may not have been the ones responsible for the four hijacked planes, but it is the most visible anti-American country in the Middle East. I felt that they had become too easy a target for our need to avenge . . . too hard for a bulk of the American population to overlook. I hoped that we would come to our senses and continue to seek justice, find the ones responsible, rather than take the easier course, lash out at the easiest target because it is there.

As the first bombs struck Baghdad, everything I tried to say became moot.

We are now at war, and any further words would be too late. Forever the destiny of both nations will be altered. The United States will succeed barring divine intervention. Saddam Hussein will no longer rule in Iraq, if he lives at all, and for the time being many Americans will feel that justice has been served. Maybe justice will have been served; only history will tell.

It is time now to consider the future.

In my humble opinion, I hope I was wrong for the sake of my country and my children. I hope they find countless hidden caches of “weapons of mass destruction.” I hope they find “proof” that they were to be given to terrorists for use against the people of the world. I hope the Iraqi people see us a liberators freeing them from an oppressive tyrant, much like the people in Europe when the Allies rolled through. I hope the nations of the world see the error of their call for caution and seek to restore the alliances we all worked so hard to forge. On these I can afford to have a little egg on my face, and I would be glad, relieved that my humble opinion was wrong.

But can our country afford me to be right?

If I was right and there are no caches, we will have attacked a sovereign nation against our own most prized rule of law: innocence until guilt is proved. We will have waged war without just cause, and the world will not soon forget. Our flag will become likened to the Roman Eagle, the Nazi Swastika, The Soviet Sickle and Star. We will have become another in a long list of imperialistic regimes bent on global domination, the latest greatest “bad guy” of the world.

My children will grow up feeling the sting of my generations actions, hated more than ever . . . even worse, feared. They will know what terrorism means as more and more of the world takes pot shots at toppling the new king of the hill. They will live in a less stable economy, as our goods are no longer welcome in foreign markets. They will see us more isolated, alone against a world that would rather see us gone. They will not know the time when our nation stood as the defender of free people, welcome members of the world community. They will only read of our glory days in the history books . . . and the fateful Wednesday in March that it all came crashing down in an act of blind vengeance.

In my humble opinion, we all need to pray that I am wrong. I will even buy the eggs.