Remarks Given at the Macon Centreplex during the Iraqi Theatre Deployment Ceremony of the 352nd Core Support for the Engagement in Iraq

Written and delivered by Jim Marshall, March 15, 2003.

Let me start by thanking all those who gave me the opportunity to speak at an occasion like this. Certainly that includes Major Henderson and those who worked on today’s program. But it also includes those who elected me. And it includes my family, my parents, my wife and children, my brothers and sisters.

I would not be here today without my family’s love and support. Few of us would be. All of us. Each and everyone present, including all of those today preparing to deploy, owes a debt of gratitude to their families.

We know that. We know we cannot thank you enough. I know this nation cannot thank you and honor you enough, and I thank you now on behalf of our country.

Please call my office if I can help you while your loved ones are deployed. I’ll be speaking tonight in Atlanta at the annual dinner for the Georgia Committee of Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, and I will focus upon how important it is that those of us who remain behind support the loved ones of those who go.

A Macon Telegraph reporter, Don Schanche, called me a couple of days ago. He said he was interviewing combat veterans to see if they had any advice to offer our troops who were being deployed to the Iraqi theatre. He asked if I had any advice?

After a pause, I told him I didn’t. I told him I didn’t think I could add something worthwhile to the wealth of advice our deploying troops were receiving from many good sources, sources with more information about the impending conflict, sources with greater combat experience, sources with more current combat experience.

But I kept thinking about Don’s question as I worked on these remarks earlier today. And I decided that there were a few things I’d like our soldiers to be thinking about and that it was okay to repeat what they had already heard from others. After all, this is the military. What military training or communication doesn’t go over and over and over and over the exact same thing to the point of driving you nuts.

First things first. It is only natural for you to ask yourself “Why am I going to war?” For me, when I left college in 1968 to enlist for Vietnam, the major reason was pretty simple: DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY. It’s how I was raised. It’s what I believe.

I didn’t know if the war in Vietnam was a good idea or bad idea. I wasn’t sure about the war’s merits. But I was sure about three things.

First I was sure our elected leaders were in a much better position than I was to decide whether we should go to war.

Second, unless I was certain the war was wrong or I conscientiously objected for religious reasons, I knew my duty as a young man was simply to execute the decision of my elected elders, to give up my student deferment, to share the risk of combat with others my age who were being drafted to fight.

Third, I knew that if a Democracy like ours waits for overwhelming consensus to develop before going to war, it has almost surely waited too long.

Listen to these words: “If France had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs.” Who said that?

Listen again: “If France had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs.”

Those are the words of Adolph Hitler explaining that France could have averted World War II if it had acted to nip German aggression in the bud. Instead France chose appeasement and negotiation while Germany’s power and resolve grew.

France is a Democracy like ours. Before World War II as Germany grew stronger in military force and resolve, France waited for an overwhelming consensus to develop among its citizenry that war was the only option. And France finally got that overwhelming consensus. It got it after Germany blitzkrieged France, taking it captive in a matter of days.

Now what about Iraq? Do we have an overwhelming national consensus to go to war in Iraq? The answer is no. This is a difficult judgment call for our country and its leaders. Unless Saddam relents, we are faced with two bad choices: either go to war or continue the status quo in Iraq, a rogue country in possession of weapons of mass destruction, a country with a history of using those weapons, a country with the wealth and resources to add nuclear weapons to its arsenal, a country with every reason to secretly supply weapons of mass destruction to its enemy, Al Qaeda, so those weapons may then be used against their mutual enemy, the Western World, the United States.

There is an old Arabic saying: “The enemy of my enemy is my ally.”

So I have thought for some time that we must do something about Iraq, particularly after 911 made it so painfully and sorrowfully clear, both to us and Saddam, how vulnerable we are to suicidal attacks by Islamist militants.

And I’m not alone in that assessment. Listen to these Presidential words: “The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The credible threat to use force, and when necessary the actual use of force, is the surest way to contain Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program [and] curtail his aggression.”

These could be the words of our current president, Republican George W. Bush. But they are actually the words of our last president, Democrat William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton said this in 1998. While Clinton and Bush differ greatly on many issues, they share a common view concerning the threat of Iraq.

I know you leave now to do your duty concerning the impending conflict in Iraq whether or not you think this conflict is necessary. For that this nation thanks and honors you for we cannot long endure without a military that executes the decisions of its political leaders, however unpopular those decisions may be.

So if you have doubts about the wisdom of our effort, that’s okay. You’ll have lots of company, and believe me you won’t be the first soldiers, nor the last, to do their duty to the utmost despite such doubts. I know from personal experience.

The English philosopher and political scientist John Stuart Mill wrote long ago “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, [a belief that] nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free. . .”

What you are about to do will involve danger, boredom, hardship, loneliness. But it will add immeasurably to your life story. You control that story. Make us proud of everything you do. Make yourself proud.

War can bring out the best or the worst in people. Let it bring out your best.

If I were going, and I wish I could, I can tell you I’d be thinking about the children represented on the tie I am wearing today in your honor. It’s a “Save the Children” tie and it depicts children from throughout the world supporting one another. It’s my favorite tie. It reminds me of the major reason I’m in politics, to help create freedom, opportunity, wellness and peace for our children throughout the world.

Let me end by sharing with you an updated version of a verse from an old, old song from central Europe:

A soldier buried long ago on a battlefield
Hears lovers laughing as they pass by.
And the soldier asks “Are these not the voices of lovers
That love and remember me?”
“Not so, my hero,” reply the lovers.
“We are those that remember not.
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled,
And the dead must be forgotten.”
Then the soldier speaks again from the deep, dark grave.
I am content.

You share a high calling. Keep your faith and be content with your duty.

Be content although others do not share your duty, your honor, your privilege.

Be content although some throughout the world and here at home protest against very acts by which you execute your duty. We would not be on the verge of war if the Iraqi people enjoyed the freedom to speak, to dissent, to protest.

Be content that in doing your duty, you seek to further a future in which lovers throughout the world may walk laughing and carefree as Spring comes and the earth smiles.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless your comrades in arms. God bless your loved ones who often suffer so much and so bravely for our country’s benefit. God bless the United States of America.

God’s speed and strength to you all.