This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE (9-21-04)

I was asked the other day.......Why should our young men and women be fighting and dying in Iraq?

It’s easy to say simply that America is at war with terrorists and we are defending freedom. Our casualties there have now exceeded over a thousand.

To get the answer I had to look back over the long sweep of history that my eighty some years covers.

When I was born we were in the midst of what has now been called World War One. Thousands of our young men were fighting in the trenches of places like the Marne, the Seine and many other places in both France and Germany. Shortly after I was born an Armistice was signed ending the bloodshed, but thousands of our young men died in this conflict. Why were they there?

Then just as I was entering my career in radio in 1941 came the Pearl Harbor attack. We had actually been at war in Europe by supplying the French and the British with war supplies. The Pearl Harbor attack plunged this country into what we now call World War Two, and it became a war on two fronts....the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Along with millions of other young men, I was involved in a conflict in the Pacific while others were preparing and eventually invaded Europe in an assault against the Nazi forces of Germany. The Pacific war saw massive casualties at Tarawa, the first counter thrust against the Japanese in the Pacific. That effort alone cost several thousands lives of our brave young men. More thousands would follow.

Again...why were they there?

And since then.....Korea......where thousands more of our young men lost their lives in an effort to save Korea. Remember, the Chinese came pouring across the Yalu....and we lost countless young men.

Why were they there....so far from American shores?

And Vietnam. Our brave young men fought through a strange land, against an enemy who was ruthless. Over 50,000 of our young men died in those jungles of Vietnam.

Why were they there?

It may sound stupid or over simplification to say....we were there because we cherish freedom....not just for ourselves as Americans, but for all other peoples of the world also.

But isn’t that the reason we were there....and are there now in Iraq?

Senseless as it may sound.....America has always stood for freedom.....from the very beginning of our nation as we struck off the bonds of the Mother Country.....declared our independence...and adopted a constitution to ensure that we would be guaranteed our freedoms....from tyranny from within as well as from without.

In Iraq it is the freedom of 25 million people that has brought our brave men and women to their shores, but it is more than that.

The attack of nine-eleven in two thousand one....awakened us to the terrible aspirations of a group of terrorists who would destroy our very freedoms.....yes....if they are victorious the world we know and the freedoms we love....will disappear. They have no moral restrictions on what they do....they kill ruthlessly and indiscriminately....sparing no one even themselves.

In the past wars....we have fought to preserve the freedoms of other nations.......in Iraq....we fight to preserve our own freedoms let there be no doubt about that.

We deeply deplore the loss of lives of our young men and women, but thank God they are willing to stand, fight and die.....for our freedoms....yours and mine.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.