May 28, 2003 - On May 1, 2003 the President of the United States donned a flight suit, climbed into the cockpit of a Navy jet to commence the grueling 30 mile flight from a California airbase to the deck of an aircraft carrier idling offshore. Landing on the carrier in calm seas and a friendly wind he alit from the plane to shake the hands of the crew and captain. The purpose of his dangerous mission in a plane piloted by one of the nation’s most experienced naval aviators was to announce the end of combat operations in the Second Iraqi War. This delicate mission, recognizing the sacrifice of 139 British and American soldiers in the pursuit of a safer more congenial Iraqi regime, was emblematic of the bravery of a great leader. He spoke for the television lens with the vast deep ocean for a backdrop, all the time looking past the cameras to the California shoreline slipping slowly from right to left. The speech was as genuine as the peace that it ushered in.

Today, May 28, 2003, the allied death count stands at least 202. The newly free and liberated Iraqi people have killed six American soldiers in the past 24 hours. At least 63 Americans have died since the President’s awesome exhibition of stagecraft. It has been a strange welcome for the liberators of an enslaved people. Where have all the flowers gone that a grateful population was expected to strew in the paths of the liberators? Explosions blossom in their stead, the liberators paths are strewn instead with land mines, rocket propelled grenades and machine gun fire from ambush. It is the same welcome enjoyed by the Red Army when it went to liberate Afghanistan and instead commenced the dervish spin of events that ended the Soviet Union as its parts were flung away by the centrifugal force of the spinning.

History is a patient teacher. Its pace is measured in decades and centuries not days and months and its lessons are hard. America’s wars in the Moslem east are far from over. Perhaps as the lesson progresses someone in Washington will examine a map and recognize that our garrisons east of Suez are surrounded by a cordon of implacable enemies and smiling “friends” that hide enduring enmity behind a amicable mask.

Despite our leader’s contrary protestations we are indeed engaged in a crusade of one culture arrayed against another. Western liberal democratic tradition in which sovereignty emanates from the common consent of the people cannot reasonably expect to make common cause with a culture in which sovereignty resides solely in God. We may have seen Armies dissolve in the face of an assault of overwhelming force but we have won no victory in the Moslem east. The only peace our soldiers have won is the peace of the grave.