Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., American war hero

Gen. Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. has died.

You may not recognize the general’s name. It doesn’t come up often in  history classes these days, which is strange considering he and the men he commanded were responsible for one of the landmark events of the 20th century.

Gen. Tibbets was the commander of the bomber Enola Gay on Aug. 6, 1945, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The bomb killed approximately 140,000 people, some immediately, many later. The Hiroshima bombing, followed up by the bombing of Nagasaki, brought an end to the war against Japan.

Upon the 60th anniversary of the bombing, Gen. Tibbets and his crew issued a statement saying they had no regrets.

What Gen. Tibbets did back then was hard, bloody, nasty business. But he did it to save his fellow countrymen and to end a war.

While it may be hard for our modern sissified anti-war activists to understand, what he did was a good thing. Thankfully, Gen. Tibbets and his generation understood that to stop tyrants you must defeat them, whatever it takes, not talk to them.

If only Americans would realize that our country faces a similar threat today from the Islamo-fascists, one that will not end until we win. Iraq is the theater we chose for this fight, and it has drawn out the enemy.

The latest news from Iraq is that the surge is continuing to work. The media largely ignored it in September, but now the death toll has continued to drop in October and word is finally getting out.

We can win against Islamo-fascism, and we must.

Gen. Tibbets asked that he not have a headstone or marker at his grave because he didn’t want it to become a draw for anti-war protesters. This is how America nowadays treats real heroes.

If only we had more people like Gen. Tibbets today, this country’s future would not be in serious doubt.