Winter Wonderland: Perseverance Wins the Day

It has been a snowy and blustery couple of weeks in the high country of the West. I spent the first week after Christmas in the midst of another Colorado Front Range blizzard. The Pacific Northwest has been my wintry playground for this week. Massive amounts of snow have hit the Colorado region. It took almost five hours to complete a little over 150 miles. I-25 and I-80 across Wyoming presented an icy obstacle at almost every turn. Mount Sherman lies just to the east of Laramie, Wyoming. Blowing snow obscured my path as I eased over the mountain at approximately 30 MPH while slowly driving around snow drifts in a rather serpentine line of travel. The same conditions have presented themselves in the Cascades. A couple of nights ago, I crossed over Mount Hood by traveling between the snow poles lining the sides of the road. The mountain was practically deserted with the exception of another trucker traveling in the opposite direction. The mountain spoke rather harshly that night and made sure that I paid close attention to her as she tried to bury my truck under a pristine blanket of white.

Battling Mother Nature brings another issue to mind. Perseverance. With the sea change in Washington, what is to become of us and our involvement in Iraq? Are we doomed to repeat history? Have we learned nothing in the past 30 plus years? Have we simply not developed beyond the social myopia of the 60's and 70's and removed the name of Saigon, only to replace it with Baghdad? Will we allow a political party, which is desperately seeking to reacquire the White House, to dominate the social agenda and affect foreign policy? Can we really affect change in the Middle East? Speaking for myself, I am fully aware that I cannot concretely answer any of the above questions. I can only present views anchored on the bedrock of fact.

In the post World War II era, I've always wondered why we as a country always cut and run when the going gets tough? Do we no longer have the internal vicissitude to handle difficulty? This weakness is even more provocative with an all volunteer military. A volunteer force is more efficient than a force of conscripts however, what is to become of a nation where succeeding generations of her young never have to serve her? Will such a nation be eventually consumed by the passage of time? The vast majority of our soldiers speak positively when questioned about their efforts in Iraq. Unfortunately, they represent only 1% of their generation. How are we to avoid the very issue which Jefferson and Madison feared the most? Will the tyranny of the majority drown out the significance of our military operations in Iraq?

Whatever occurs, we all can agree on the fact that maintaining the status quo in Iraq is no longer an option. Things must change however, the degree and direction of change must be efficiently controlled. Arbitrary dates of withdrawal will not work. Any withdrawal, no matter how good it makes us feel at home, will be seen as our defeat in the Middle East. That said, we can also no longer allow the youth of our nation to be used as fodder for Iraqi inaction. They must assume control. Do we partition the country? The vast majority of Iraq is peaceful. Do we cordon off Baghdad and let the opposing factions eliminate each other?

At the very least, the year to come will be interesting. Nobody can know for sure who will win the day. We all must admit that the battlefield in Iraq has changed. Politics has now entered the fray. My only hope is that our soldiers will not pay with their lives as Washington becomes consumed by a tidal pool of constant bickering. Opposing factions of our efforts in Iraq would do well to read Sun Tzu's "Art of War" and come to the realization that when civil authorities lose focus on national objectives, both the military and nation are doomed for defeat.

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