President Bush will be on television Tuesday night to talk about the war in Iraq (among other issues), which has just had its bloodiest week since the president declared hostilities ended last May 1.
We’ve seen that harrowing footage of the Japanese kidnap victims, prayed with the town of Macon, Mississippi, with the abduction of its native son and, if you were with us on Friday, listened with amazement at the story of “Times of London” reporter Stephen Farrell, who was kidnapped last week and then kidnapped from his first abductors.
Not surprisingly, stories like these prompt some people to say America should just get out.
But those people are not in the majority. While a new “Newsweek” poll suggests the more you can remember Vietnam, the more likely you are to be concerned America could get stuck militarily in Iraq, most people, 57 percent, still say the U.S. did the right thing in striking Saddam Hussein. And 63 percent say they’re fine with increasing the number of troops over there, if needed, in response to these recent attacks.
It is an election year, and because of that, just about everything is viewed through that political prism. But that doesn’t change certain realities. General Sherman said it clearly: “War is hell.”
And the men and women in Iraq, whether as civilian workers or wearing the uniform, have chosen to be there and serve in whatever way they do. We assume they know risks. They assume we pray for their safe return.