The realization that we have been fighting a four-year Global War on Terror for a period longer than it took our grandparents— the Greatest Generation — to engage and defeat imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and their Axis partners might cause some to question our progress and reconsider our mission.
Discerning our prospects for victory against terrorism requires both an understanding of the complexities of fighting a war in this new, uncharted territory and an appreciation of those we have sent to fight it.
Our grandparents stunned the world with an Allied victory in only 1,365 days: time that included the Doolittle Raid and Midway, the invasion of Normandy, and the atomic results of the Manhattan Project.
Our own progress in four years, though, should not be underestimated: the terror sanctuary of the Taliban is gone and Saddam Hussein is not torturing his own people any more. Three-quarters of Al Qaeda’s original senior leadership have been killed or captured. A.Q. Kahn’s marketplace of destruction that provided nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and other nations has been shut down. The Iraqi people have gone to the polls in impressive numbers and will soon be voting on the first democratic constitution in the region. On our own doorstep, the FBI announced the Aug. 31 indictment of four men accused of planning terrorist attacks in Southern California.
Despite these victories, attacks in London, Baghdad, Sharm el-Sheikh and elsewhere remind us that our enemy is not yet vanquished.
If the script to ultimate victory were known — as it is the historical hindsight of World War II — it would be easy to measure our progress. But, in a war against enemies who do not mass on borders or even have a conventional chain of command, traditional metrics are not very useful.
Instead, we are inspired by another measure: the courage and skill of those we have sent to do our fighting. While we fight a far different war from that of our grandparents, the sacrifice, principle, commitment, and bravery of our uniformed peers surely matches that of the Greatest Generation.
The brave Americans on the streets of Kirkuk and Kabul bear a strong resemblance to their predecessors that fought from Bastogne to the Bismarck Sea. According to Department of Defense records, the average age of those storming the beaches on D-Day was only 19. Today, the average soldier at war is just 21.1 years old.
While these men and women are not much different than those giants on whose shoulders they stand, the more meaningful truth is that they are not much different from you and me.
We should be proud of our warriors not only because of their success, but because they are truly us. We should be confident of our victory because these brave Americans represent the best our nation has to offer — if they cannot win, we have lost.
Author Stephen Mansfield writes of our generation at war, “They were not expected to do well. The conventional wisdom pegged them as spoiled offspring of guilt-ridden baby-boomer parents who plied them with toys but never told them who they really were. They lived, we were told, in a materialistic, amoral, “online” world that hardened their souls and sickened their minds… They gave us Columbine, after all, and a dozen other symbols of decadence and decline.”
Our brothers and sisters-in-arms have exploded such pessimistic expectations faster than a “target of opportunity” on the first night of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
They have postponed college educations, said goodbye to fiancées and best friends, left behind the certainty of hometowns, and shunned the familiarity of life as you and I live it. They have traded all they have for a chance to be part of something larger than themselves. And they have fought valiantly.
They know what they are fighting for. As one embedded journalist noted in the recently-released book Faith of the American Soldier, “Soldiers I encountered were trained, ethical, thoughtful, and intelligent. It was not unusual to talk to a private or private first class and be absolutely astounded at how well he could talk about why they were there.”
Their confrontation with the brutal realities of war has caused them to embody sacrifice, the sincerest tenet of any religion. The most popular emblem carried by members of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, outside of official insignia, is a small shield paraphrasing the words of Joshua 1:9: “I will be strong and courageous. I will not be terrified, or discouraged; for the Lord my God is with me wherever I go.”
They are not perfect. Just as you and I, they have lapsed in judgment and erred in justice. But intervening against injustice has not taken someone wiser or more senior, for they have done it themselves: the whistleblower at Abu Ghraib was twenty-four year old Specialist Joe Darby of Waynesville, North Carolina.
One journalist, writing of his experiences at the front, commented, “The press back home doesn’t have it right. We are doing these people a disservice. I haven’t found ‘Animal House’ and ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ over here. What I found was ‘Braveheart’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan.’”
These are our nation’s soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. These are our generation’s peers. These are our response to the terrorists of 9/11. These, I hope you will agree, are our heroes.
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