Re-arm the Iraqi People

It's time we realized that a democracy is not something you can give to a nation or a people. A democracy is something that has to be desired more than life itself. It has to be paid for (in lives most of the time) by the people who desire it.

We cannot give Iraq a democracy. We can stand by them. We can support them. We can even fight alongside them. But, we cannot fight against tyranny for them.

Terroristic warfare is a different beast than the wars our soldiers have been classically trained for. Terrorists don't have a "front line". They don't wear easily identifiable uniforms. They hide in homes, mosques and hospitals. They surround themselves and hide behind civilians (mostly women and children) because they know we will not kill the innocent indiscriminently.

This is a very different war than we have trained for, but not so different than a war that we have seen before. This is a very personal war for the people of Iraq.

This is a war that must be fought in every alley, every mosque, every home and every street. An army cannot do that. Only a people can do that. Only a nation's people can erradicate this type of enemy to peace and the will of the people.

The terrorists and fanatical religious leaders that are ravaging Iraq and killing its people can only be irradicated by an Iraqi civil war in which the people fight for the democracy that they desire.

Nobody wants to say that - but it's true.

We have made the situation worse by confiscating the weapons of law-abiding citizens while the terrorists and fanatical Muslims continue to carry weapons, purchase more weapons and use them against the law-abiding Iraqis that trusted us enough to disarm.

It seems that we would have learned what taking guns away from law-abiding citizens does when we made all handgun ownership illegal in Washington D.C. and created the greatest concentration of handgun violence in the entire country. But, I am afraid that we haven't learned that lesson yet.

You see, evil triumphs when good people are disarmed. And evil hides, runs and (hopefully) dies when good people are armed. It has always been that way throughout history. To make believe otherwise is simply putting one's head in the sand.

In order to free the Iraqi people from the daily hell of bombings of innocent civillians and mistreatment and murder of women and people of differing faiths, you will have to have people on every street, searching every mosque, and looking in every home, business and hole in the ground for the enemies of Iraq.

Do we have enough soldiers to do that? No. No army does.

Only the Iraqi people are up to this task. Re-arm the Iraqi people and let them fight for the democracy that we long to give them - but cannot.

We have recognized, in our nation's most sacred political documents, that freedom and self-government are the birthrights of all of humanity. What we have not learned is that freedom can only be reclaimed by the people from whom it has been stolen. We cannot give the people of Iraq something that they must take back for themselves.

As much as I wish it were different, the simple, hard fact is that the Iraqi democracy must be bought with the blood and sacrafice of the majority of that nation's people - just like ours was.

Re-arm the good people of Iraq and stand with them as they fight for thier own country - their own freedom.