Stay the Course, Mr. President

By

Barbara J. Stock

The “shot heard around the world” was fired on April 19, 1775, and on that day the eight-year struggle for freedom from British oppression began.  There were dissenters, of course.  Many in the colonies remained loyal to the British Crown and there were those who wanted freedom but felt it was folly to think a ragtag bunch of farmers could defeat one of the most powerful military machines of the day. 

 On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Two future presidents of the United States, John Adams and the declaration’s author, Thomas Jefferson, were basically saying:   Young America, stay the course.   

There were many times when despair and hopelessness was the Revolutionary Army’s worst enemy.  At Valley Forge, a freezing and starving army’s only battle was against the brutal elements.  Of the 11,000 troops there, over 2,500 men died from the cold and starvation that winter.  Despite all of this, the future first president, General George Washington, stayed the course.  If he wavered in his belief, it was never witnessed by his men.   

Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression.  His mother died when he only ten years old and in his marriage to Mary Todd, he fathered four sons but only one lived to adulthood.  

Lincoln knew that a divided America would not long survive and achieve the greatness that our forefathers had fought and died for.  Determined to keep America whole and united, Lincoln had to internalize the pain that Americans were now killing Americans.  To save America, he was forced to destroy nearly half of it and to save the Constitution, he had to lock it up and break half of its sacred beliefs.   

When the war ended, Lincoln spoke the words now immortalized on the Lincoln Memorial:  "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "  Lincoln stayed the course during one of the most horrendous times in American history.  He is revered by most Americans as the man who saved the country.   But even that is changing in the eyes of some far-left liberals. 

Today, many leftists who are enjoying the fruits of a united country condemn Lincoln for his “trashing” of the Constitution to save the country referring to him a “typical Republican” who ignored the personal rights of citizens and became a tyrant who should have been impeached.   

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into a privileged family but the family wealth did not spare him the ravages of polio.  FDR was elected when America was in the grip of a world-wide depression.  In just a few years he was faced with the second great World War.    

 For two years, the poorly equipped and trained American military did not win a single battle on land or sea.  America was out-manned and out-gunned on every front by the powerful Japanese and German war machines.

If one were to bring World War II forward to today, liberals would be calling for an “immediate withdrawal” of our troops because the war was unwinnable.  Ex-military men in Congress would be rushing to the cameras to call the troops “losers” and “desperate” soldiers totally unable to deal the stress of war.  They would claim the president had gotten the country into a war on two fronts unnecessarily. 

The New York Times would have put Operation Overlord on the front page declaring the American people have a right to know what is going to be happening to their sons.  Leftist congressmen and senators would have said the expected losses were unacceptable and mission doomed to failure.  Demands would have been made to explain the secrecy of the mission and Congress would want to know why it was not informed.  Liberals would declare that the Constitution was being so violated the president should just burn the document and be done with it.  

Even more ominous is the segment that would proclaim the entire war is nothing more than a Jewish grab at world domination.  There are those today that believe World War II was started by the Zionist Jew to gain a homeland and that to this day, control the American government. 

The Manhattan Project would have been deemed as an unnecessary escalation that might be seen by the enemy as unwillingness to enter honest peace talks and give the enemy a reason to attack us again.  Environmentalists would be howling about the pollution released in the New Mexico desert from the testing and the disruption of the life cycle of some desert flea. 

Embedded journalists would have instantly reported any mistreatment of a prisoner or the death of a civilian, but would have ignored the seven million Chinese slaughtered by the Japanese.   

The United Nations and Red Cross would follow American soldiers around to make sure the Geneva Conventions were being followed to the letter but only mildly protest the Bataan Death March or the Nazi concentration camps where millions died. 

If that sounds ridiculous, one only has to listen to the news daily to see that that is exactly what is happening today.   

Many people probably do not know that Hitler had his supporters here in America.  Aviation icon Charles Lindbergh and British Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy felt Hitler was good for Germany.  Today, there are many high profile Americans who believe if America just abandons Iraq and the Middle East, everything will be just fine and Muslims will no longer want to kill Americans.  There are as mistaken as Lindbergh and Kennedy were all those years ago. 

While our soldiers are taken and beaten and tortured to death, the world frets about what terrorists being held at Guantanamo are getting to eat.  They want to know if they are being allowed to practice their religion and pray as they wish.  Are they being subjected to loud music or cold temperatures?  Where was the outcry from these people when the bodies of our soldiers had to lie in the streets while booby-traps all around them were defused?  

Where is the outcry when a suicide bomber blows himself up in a mosque or when Iraqi factory workers and police are kidnapped and executed?  The hue and cry was loud enough when our Marines were accused of killing civilians, but when Islamics slaughter innocents it’s reported as an everyday occurrence much like the weather. 

President Bush became a wartime president on September 11, 2001.  He did not ask for it nor seek it out but the responsibility comes with the job.   But this war is different.  This is a world-wide war that after nearly five years, many still do not understand the extent of the Islamic threat to the free world.  The attack on America on that sunny morning was obvious, but even before the dust settled on the remains of the towers, the whisper campaign started that Bush himself had carried out the attack.  Some felt it was on the orders of his master, the Jews.  

Some leftists continue to insist that the towers were blown up, not knocked down.  These conspiracy theorists say that Bush did it because he wanted to invade Iraq and steal its oil.  Liberals aid and abet the enemy by calling our troops murderers and butchers who kill innocent civilians without regard.  Many say there is no threat from Islam.  There are leftist blogs that claim Bin Laden doesn’t really exist.  They say that he is a made-up evil-doer created by the CIA and his constant threats to attack again are a government ploy to keep Americans terrified so they will give up all their rights willingly.   To these people, Bush is the only enemy and Islamic terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters. 

Stay the course, Mr. President.  You are in good company.  At every point in American history America has been blessed to have the right man leading this country when it was needed the most.  Ignore the nay-sayers.  There have always been those who feel that they have a better way and would do a better job.  They will fade into history as a footnote so ignore them and carry on. Future generations of Americans will thank you for it.