Today is June 6 (or was, I suppose), the anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. It has been 64 years to the day that this incredible event occurred.

I cannot sum up the meaning of this event in totality; that is something I will leave to those who experienced it, and to those with far greater skill in writing or speaking than I. Ronald Reagan's 40th anniversary speech that he delivered on the beach at Normandy is absolutely brilliant. You can read the entire speech here. But my favorite two paragraphs are as follows:
"The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

"You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you."

I will allow you to read Reagan's words, both these and the rest, to get the full effect of D-Day's symbolism as the epitome of a struggle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, compassion and hatred.

I am about to compare WWII to the Iraq War. I want to stress that I am not, by any means, using D-Day or the emotional impact of it to further my political point. The first portion of this post is a tribute to D-Day; this portion is a political analysis separate, but related. It was the D-Day anniversary that got me thinking about the similarities between the two wars, and why I think the Iraq War is quite justified.

Very few people in this country, nearly 70 years afterward, will argue that we should not have entered the Second World War. I will also wager that a vast majority of those who oppose the Iraq War would agree that our entry into WWII was justified. Of course, there are some differences, but I believe that the cores of the ideology remain the same.

The main arguments I have heard against the Iraq action are as follows:

1. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
2. Saddam didn't pose a direct threat to the US.
3. Iraq was not tied to 9/11 at all. (There are arguments that Iraq was not tied to al Qaeda, which are known to be untrue.)

Another claim is that oil is the only reason we invaded. I do not believe this is true in the first place. I will concede the above three points are true, but I still agree with the decision to go to war.

In World War II, we did not declare war on anyone until December of 1941, well after the Germans had begun to invade Europe and the Japanese China. We responded to a direct attack on US soil. We deployed troops to both Europe and the Pacific in retaliation. We took the fight to them, away from our own borders and our own citizens.

Germany was not a threat to US security at the time. There was absolutely no way for it to attack us. U-boats of the time simply could not make it across the Atlantic without being easily spotted and stopped; they had no aircraft with the range to cross the Atlantic; they didn't even have a functioning nuclear device to use on anyone, let alone a country over 3000 miles of ocean away. Furthermore, Germany, while closely allied with Japan, was not involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. It did not supply personnel, resources, equipment, or significant specific funding. (By specific funding, I mean money for the express purpose of attacking the United States.) But we still declared war on them anyways, and no one questioned it once the decision was made.

Iraq is quite similar. Saddam Hussein harbored and funded al Qaeda terrorists. That is why al Zarqawi was in Iraq; he was there well before our invasion. He was building an arsenal of nuclear weapons, as Germany intended to do, but was incapable of attacking us at the time. And there's even another similarity: both nations, Iraq and Germany, tried to invade their respective regions roughly 1-2 decades earlier, and were stopped by the United States.

The crucial point about fighting in Iraq was to take the front lines to the enemy, as we have always done. That is why US soil has remained relatively unscathed in the many wars we have fought. Even in the Civil War, nearly all of the battles were fought in the South, the Union taking it to them to protect the major Northern cities and population. It has been the modus operandi of the US military for centuries.

If someone can come up with a true, reasonable objection to the Iraq War that cannot be compared to World War II, please let me know. I'd be happy to explore it. But I believe, with the list of objections I have been presented with, that it is a double standard to have no qualms about our involvement in WWII but to have many about the Iraq War.

I will discuss my unhappiness about how a political party is currently using losses and despair in Iraq for political gain (vis a vis 2006) but that is for the future.

Remember those that have died in the defense of our great nation and way of life, both 64 years ago at Normandy and presently in Iraq.