This is Floyd Wynne with "The View from Here"  (5/04/04)

We're losing 1100 of them per day!

That's the rate that the veterans of World War II are dying. Being one of those veterans, my hope is that I'm not among today's 1100, although at 85, one has witnessed a great deal of the history of this nation.

As the past century opened, we were in the midst of what has been termed the Spanish-American war...we were a nation of 76 million and McKinley was the new President. The future looked bright.

Then came Germany and the Kaiser and World War I. My father and my Uncles were among those who fought this war on behalf of Britain and France. Woodrow Wilson proposed the League of Nations, but Congress didn't approve.

I was born four days before the Armistice of that War.

Then came the lean years of a deep depression and also Adolph Hitler and eventually a world threatened by Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. The future of the world was at stake...and again we, the World War II vets took to the land, air and sea and conquered all three.

When it was over...it was difficult to see where any future threat would come from. America was the only superpower in the world and we certainly were not intent on conquering anybody.

But...one conflict after another...Panama, Grenada, then Korea...where we fought to save the South Koreans...then places like Mogadishu, Lebanon and then came Vietnam when we fought to save the South Vietnamese from the communist north.

Not all in that order...but certainly the years after World War II have been filled with one conflict for our forces after another.

Iraq is the latest. There our brave troops are fighting and dying to save the Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

In each of these conflicts...we have been motivated by the desire that all the world should be like us...free with our liberties clearly inscribed in our constitution. Even now...our hope is that Iraq can emerge as a nation of freedoms such as ours.

One big question comes to mind...and it may sound treasonable but is it our purpose as a nation to export the kind of freedom we enjoy even if it means armed conflict?

Even today we have our military spread around the world...in Germany, in Kosovo, in Iraq, in South Vietnam...yes and still on the island of Okinawa and the Japanese homeland.

The attacks on September eleventh were the first on our homeland since the days of the Civil War. The terrorist threat seems to know no boundaries, and is worldwide in nature. We have no choice but  to meet its challenge wherever that may be...and at the moment it is in Iraq.

But....when the conflict is over...and it will be...we must re-evaluate our role as the sole remaining superpower of the world, else we will vanish into the same history books that have such prior superpowers as the Spanish, the French, the British and the Russians.

I don't believe it is our mission in life to force the other nations of this world to live like we do. Enough that we stand as the bastion of freedom....we should not and must not demand that all other nations of the world live as we do.

It is noble to want all peoples everywhere to enjoy the same freedoms that we do, but can we afford to expend generation after generation in an effort to force them to do so...I think not.

As I said...that may sound a bit treasonable...but just put it down to the wanderings of a former veteran, a sincere American, who may be among that 1100 one day....but still who cares deeply about his country and it's future.

This is Floyd Wynne and that's "The View from Here"