[dude1394]

Pretty cool stuff and right on. Buck up americans..

First of all, let’s start this little journey by mentioning The Gloom. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. Bodies hanging on bridges. Prisoners standing on boxes.

Listen troops, let’s get this straight right off the bat: it’s only a catastrophe. It’s nothing more than a major disaster. I’m not being cynical, or arch, or “ironic.” I am deadly serious.

We have seen two months of what looks like non-stop catastrophe, and we will see more, and maybe worse, before we are through. Here is my well-reasoned, historically researched, deeply nuanced opinion: Tough shit. This war will be over when we say it is over, and not a second before.

When Santa Ana’s men ran up the red flag and his band played the Deguello – “The Throat Cutting” it must have made the men and women in the Alamo sick and weak in the knees. But it did not have the demoralizing effect that the Mexican dictator intended. Rather, it hardened the defenders. They did not run, and we are not going to run either, and Dan Rather and Ted Koppel and the rest can play all the goddam dirges they want to. The Alamo itself was a military disaster, a catastrophe. And when Sam Houston retreated from and kept evading Santa Ana’s army, he was called a coward and a traitor – afraid to fight, not tough enough to do what was necessary. Sam Houston was a deeply flawed man, but he had thick skin and that in itself goes a long way when you are planning deep. Sam Houston didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Glory or Honor. Sam Houston wanted Texas. Like the equally wily and patient George Washington before him, Sam Houston wanted to win. And they did win. And that is why there will be no major metropolitan area named Kerry.

kerryville