WHEN “VOTE OR DIE” MEANS SOMETHING
“In Konduz (Afghanistan), a group of women were standing in line to vote when an explosive device detonated a few hundred yards away. They refused to move — to do so, they reasoned, would be to give the terrorists a victory.” (Townhall, 10/15/04)
I wonder what it would be like to live in a country where “Vote or Die” meant something besides an outrageously crafted lie by left wing loons.
What is it about the human soul that gives people the courage to face possible death or serious injury all just to put a check mark next to the name of a total stranger?
Why are people willing to die fighting rather than submit to the notion that someone else knows better than they how to run their lives?
Do you believe in anyone or anything as strongly as those women standing in line to vote in Afghanistan?
“The mood in most places appeared irrepressibly upbeat.
“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” said Sayed Aminullah as he cast he vote at Eid Gah Mosque in the capital.
“I don’t care about the result. All I care is that we are having an election. This is a sign that things are improving for Afghanistan.” (Reuters, 10/9)
Why are Iraqi men flooding recruiting centers to sign up for the army when their compatriots are regularly and routinely murdered in suicide attacks, executed along lonely roads, and killed in gun battles with a hide and seek insurgency?
What is it that gives an Iraqi woman the courage and determination to work with coalition forces as a translator despite the fact that her family has been targeted by the terrorists, her brother killed, two other siblings seriously injured, and she herself the target of a powerful explosion that resulted in severe injuries?
Have we Americans lost this kind of courage? Have we become so jaded, so cynical about democracy, about the very essence of what democracy is, that we’re now prepared to put a man who gave aid and comfort to the enemies of democracy and has consistently opposed the march of freedom across the world, the most powerful office on the planet?
How can we keep faith with the men and women of Afghanistan and Iraq if we so cavalierly treat their sacrifices with disdain and contempt by electing a President who has denigrated these sacrifices and called their liberation a “mistake” or a “diversion?”
When I’m standing in line to vote tomorrow, I’m not going to complain about the long lines. I’m not going to dismiss this sacred act as choosing “the lesser of two evils.” I’m not going to gripe about the weather, my neighbors, my political opponents, or the biased media.
I am going to remember.
I am going to remember those women risking their lives to vote in Afghanistan.
I am going to remember that, as I’m standing in line, men and women in Iraq are fighting and dying to win their basic right as a human being to determine their own destiny.
I am going to exercise a right that my ancestors fought and died to secure and that people all over the globe are dying daily to achieve.
I am going to vote. Don’t you think you should too?