With today’s news that the Obama administration’s historic economic legislation has been approved in the U.S. Senate, it’s worth remembering what propelled Barack Obama to the presidency two years ago: his opposition to the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and his promise to withdraw our troops. President Obama has yet to act on that pledge.
The men and women being sacrificed are choosing to check out on their own terms, according to a new report. For the fourth straight year, the number of soldier suicides has escalated. "We lost more soldiers to suicide than to al-Qaeda," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. With self-sacrifice as the nation’s—and the military’s—officially dictated purpose, young people can be expected to practice what is increasingly preached. The spike in the Army’s suicide rate includes those at the nation’s top military training center, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
When Ayn Rand visited West Point in 1974 to deliver her speech, “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” she told the young cadets: “The army of a free country has a great responsibility: the right to use force, but not as an instrument of compulsion and brute conquest—as the armies of other countries have done in their histories—only as an instrument of a free nation’s self-defense, which means: the defense of a man’s individual rights.” She was right. I suppose the soldier suicides will decrease only when they are returned to their proper and noble aim: defense of the nation’s self-interest.
Speaking of West Point, the Army has created a new oral history center for first-hand accounts of those who served in World War 2 through the incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As for Ayn Rand, a new blog has been established for advancing her ideas.
