Left, Right---Who is RIGHT?

2/24/07

I was listening to a radio show the other night, I think it was Dennis Prager. He said something that rang a bell with me. He noted that to the people on the right, liberals are often wrong, misguided, ignorant of some facts or even in some cases, nieve. Liberals on the other hand, always seem to see the people on the conservative side as evil. It is barely possible in some cases to have a political discussion with a "progressive" without being called a NAZI or being accused of wanting to go find an old person and beat them up and take their Social Security check and mail it to Haliburton.
We on the right see the war as something to protect western civilization. We see a threat from radical Islam that is intended to bring all the joys of Sheria Law to our shores. We see a continual progression from Ayatollah Khomeini to Osama Bin Laden and to Iran and Hesbolla. On the left, they see this as a mistaken effort to impose our will on the peaceful religion of Islam and in particular a distraction from the only true battle in the war on terror, Afghanistan.
We see the effort in Iraq as a noble deed. We are trying, against awful odds to allow a people who were trapped in tyranny to live as a free people. We may not succeed, but we are the only country in the world that would even try. As I understand the other side, they do not understand we are in a global war that is still raging and will continue to do so for many years if not decades. They want to use the criminal courts to punish terrorists after the fact of an attack. After all, they say, it is largely our fault that we are the target of attacks.
The answer to the question of who is right will come from history. I am afraid that in the short term that history will be written by mostly supporters of the left in the press and academia. The long term will tell. Will we have chaos reigning due to a major conflict raging that could possibly have been stopped in its infancy or will our peaceful offspring's look back in horror? I know what I think and there are times when I am afraid, very afraid.