In 1917 George M Cohan wrote Over There. Following are the lyrics to the final verse, the one we typically remember:
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
The drums rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware –
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.
The important thing to remember is that all the fighting was over there. All of the fighting in World War I was over there. In World War II, after Pearl Harbor, all of the fighting was over there. In Korea all the fighting was over there. In Vietnam all the fighting was over there. All wars are bad, but a war over there is always better than a war over here.
Civilians in Europe during World War I paid a terrible price for having the battles fought over there. We paid a heavy price in the United States, but it doesn’t compare with the price paid by other countries. It was even worse in World War II. The same pattern was true in Korea and Vietnam. They were all bad, but they were all over there.
On September 11, 2011, war landed on our shores. The war was over here and the United States woke up to the brutal reality of a war fought on our shores.
President Bush understood that al Qaeda was at war with us. Bush decided that we could not just sit there and allow them to continue attacking us. We had to fight back. Surrender was never an option. The only question was where would we fight them. For President Bush, it was quite simple:
We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.
Liberals have been complaining about the unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for years. They complain about the high cost of these wars and they argue that this was oh so unnecessary. But they are forgetting something very important. During the eight years that Bush was President, he got it right. Yes, we were fighting them over there but were not fighting them over here.
Obama came into office and arrogantly dismissed the Bush doctrine. Obama, with zero experience, would show us how it was done. He started with the grand apology tour. He explained to Muslims how wonderful they are and why they should learn to love us. He loudly denounced the enhanced interrogation techniques used so effectively by Bush and replaced them with no interrogations at all. He announced that he would close Guantanamo because that was another Bush mistake, only to discover that there was no realistic alternative. He told the world that we would withdraw our troops from Iraq, regardless of consequences. All that mattered to Obama was that we brought our boys back from over there. Now he is withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan, the war he called the necessary war, for the same reason. Suddenly, the necessary war isn’t so necessary anymore. Obama was very successful in bringing our boys back from over there. Unfortunately, the result is that we are now fighting a war over here.
This has been going on all during the Obama Presidency. On at least five separate occasions terrorists managed to make it to their target in the United States. Two terrorists, the Times Square bomber and the underwear bomber were thwarted only by their own incompetence. Three terrorist attacks succeeded. The first two, the Fort Hood shooter and the Little Rock Arkansas shooters were dismissed by the Obama administration as “workplace violence” situations. He wouldn’t even admit that they were terrorist attacks. Now we have the Boston Marathon massacre and even Obama cannot pretend that this wasn’t a terrorist attack. But he is pretending that this is just another unconnected lone wolf jihadist action. He is wrong. One way or the other, this is exactly what al Qaeda had in mind. The sad reality is that from now on, we will be fighting them over here.
So what does that mean? According to Mayor Bloomberg, it means we must change our constitution to give the police more power. We must exchange our liberty for our safety. We have the NSA listening to our phones, the FBI reading our mail and the ATF confiscating our guns. When we try to get on an airplane we have to get strip searched and patted down by incompetent government employees trying desperately not to pay extra attention to the Muslim looking male with the backpack. It is insane. It is also unlikely to work. By the time we catch people over here, by definition, they are already over here.
As I watched President Bush at the dedication of his library I was reminded of the significance of over there. President Bush got it exactly right and we owe him a debt of gratitude. Following is what he said with regard to the invasion of Afghanistan:
“Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocence, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”
Saddam Hussein didn’t get the e-mail, so we took him out too. Then, the whole world watched and wondered where Bush would go next. Iran, according to CIA reports, suspended its nuclear weapons program. Libya voluntarily dismantled their program without being asked. The whole world feared us. Very few governments were willing to risk sheltering international terrorists. Even Libya started cooperating. That didn’t change until we stupidly elected Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who promptly tried to lose the war in Iraq. But they underestimated George W. Bush. He ordered the surge, in spite of opposition within his own party, because he knew that the price of failure over there was a war over here.
Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions . . . . Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq
Now, can someone please explain this to Obama?
TDM