Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published April 16, 2003

Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble

So much has happened in the past three weeks for which we can be justly proud. Standing virtually alone among nations, we moved to free an entire people from an oppression we can hardly imagine -- a regime that greeted dissent with death or mutilation; cruelty that included the public removal of offenders' tongues if they dared speak out against the ruling power; man's inhumanity to man as government policy.

So in an effort that military analysts will be studying for generations to come, in only three weeks time, we set an entire people free and we did it without even so much as showing an American flag -- no U.S. identification on any of the vehicles of war, no white stars painted on truck doors. Nothing. Yes, in Baghdad City Center, an exuberant Marine draped an American flag over the head of the bronze statue of Saddam while he placed a tow chain around his neck. But he was immediately ordered to take his flag down.

Why, you ask? When freedom was brought to the Iraqi nation by the sweat of the American people, and in the sacrifice of the lives of nearly a hundred of our finest young men and women, why were they not allowed to even show the American flag? It's a complicated question, but perhaps one best answered with the understanding that if you've got it, you don't need to flaunt it.

From the beginning, President Bush's "friends" in the Arab world accused him of waging a war of aggression in order to conquer and dominate the Iraqi people. From Biblical times, conquer and dominate is all they have ever known. They simply can't understand any other motivation for going to war. Mr. Bush's "friends" on the home front accused him waging a war of aggression in order to control the Iraqi oil fields for his cronies in the oil industry. Since they lost power in 1994, to falsely accuse and discredit is all these people have ever known. So President Bush wanted to make sure all his critics, both at home and abroad, see the United States as liberators of an oppressed people, not conquerors of an oil-rich nation.

And yes, in the end the American flag did fly. It was flown by the Iraqi people themselves. The liberated people of Iraqi have now told the world that the United States of America did the right thing. And did it because it was the right thing to do.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle. He can be contacted at edwd@blomand.net