The title is a line from "Platoon"....a line that lives with every survivor...when you fight for questionable missions....when you fight...

Tomorrow we will move a monument...
to the Confederate soldiers who stood up at Port Hudson, La.
the longest seige....40+ days...in the Civil War, they held after Vicksburg fell...

Tomorrow morning my wife, president of the La. Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy....will oversee the movement of a monument constructed in 1938 to the memory of the Rebs who fought at Port Hudson, La....the last bastion on the Mississippi River that fell in 1863.

It will be located on property of a private landowner...a man, who when they dug up a body during site construction...of a Yankee soldier...identified from his buttons...his belt buckle...was buried with honors by Southern Men in reinactor uniforms of the Union...with honor....as all who gave the ultimate sacrifice should be honored.

We will honor our dead...Confederate and Union...in the coming months...under the cause of Southern Women who remember the blood...who work to honor the ground...where the blood of heros is consicrated.

It will not be politically correct...but the spirits of soldiers will hear....the words of women who remember....who honor...who consicrate the ground.
The ground of a lost cause....a cause responded too by patriots. Right or wrong.
It don't mean nothing...and yet everything. The irony of heroism.

Just like Vietnam...just like Iraq...just like the code...for those who remember.
And, those wonderful....beautiful women of The South who spend their time remembering, honoring and celebrating heroism....thank God I'm a Southern Man, blessed by such
women...women who recognize warriors...who make our service worthwhile with their consistant dedication....rememberance...it's our women that require our sacrifice...they deserve it....require it....inspire it. Without our muse...we are nothing...with them...we are everything. We were soldiers...once and young.

It's done.

There is again a monument on the Port Hudson battleground
remembering the men who fought for The Confederacy in the
longest seige in American war history. The place where
the casualty rate was the most lopsided in the favore of Rebels,
where the first black regiment massed an assault for the Union.

Where heros on both sides stepped up and wrote history.

It took the unanimous support of her heritage group,
a contributed effort by a crain operation with a 10-year
Exxon-Mobile contract, a private land owner, a Southern lady
who came up with $2 grand of her own instantaneously for
the umbrella ($1 million) insurance coverage for the move, a La. State Police
Troop escourt...and a few good men.

They all agreed my wife was the influence that made it happen...
my wife knows what it really means to support the troops.
I'm very proud...she wept...I was moved.

Honoring the past can instruct the future.

I just posted this on the conservative "Louisiana Politics" forum...

No answers, hummm...(to prior questions asking for the mission and what victory is now)

I remember sitting in front of a television on
the day we invaded Iraq...on convention with my wife
and watching with another guy, who also was a convention
spouse...he was excited and sure we would find stockpiles of WMDs.

As we watched "shock and awe" I asked him what he would think
if no WMD stockpiles were found...he blew that off...he was convinced by the administration they were there.

I told him we could roll through Baghdad, but the house-to-house
fighting would be Hell and guerillas could make our action misery...he deflected that.

Now, more than four years later everyone wants to dodge
the early predictions and ask "where do we go from here?"
Since al-Queda wasn't there then and is there now.

A troop surge announced in January hasn't been completed
because we don't have enough active, reserve and national
guard troops on hand. The draft I suggested (which brought
guffaws from the GOP) is a dead issue. Generals who say they
need more troops are bushed off.

My comparisons to Vietnam, long laughed off by the GOP,
are now becoming more of the talk-show banter.
Col. David Hackworth (may he RIP in Arlington)
was sayig the same things...he wrote the REAL book
on guerilla fighting some 37 years ago.

Meanwhile...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9d14ba3c-ffed-11db...0b5df10621.html

“The assumption has always been that Mr Bush was planning to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor and that the Republicans in Congress would go along with him,” says Charlie Cook, a leading political analyst. “But that looks increasingly difficult by the day. We could be facing a Nixon in 1975 situation where senior Republicans ultimately prevail on George Bush to change course.”

“This is the most important American political debate since the 1968 to 1973 Vietnam period,” says Richard Holbrooke, a senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and potential future secretary of state. “For the first time in America’s history, the next president will come to office inheriting two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – that is the situation we are in.”

-----------------

Of course all the Hillary-haters will blow that off too...they know best.

I find myself in a strange situation...worried that the pendelum will swing too far...that we Democrats will gain a veto-proof majority in the Senate as a result of all this...and "comprehensive immigration reform" will get passed.

It's hell being the one to call for restraint and moderation as everyone else goes marching off to patriotic tunes (and country music) and then finding myself trying to do the same thing to the results of the adventurism.


I find myself hoping the Republicans in Congress find thier cahonies and bring the war to a reasonable end before this goes too far. But I'm just not sure Trent Lott et al can do it. It will take some serious thinking for those who banged the drums of war so loud, for so long, to assess the situation and come to a conclusion that an old Democrat war dog has seen since March of 2003.

War is Evil my friends, a neccessary evil at times, but one only to be entered into with serious consideration and emotionless planning. We didn't do that...now it's time to get real...before we watch our government go too far left.

Please.

I did not know that Holbrooke was a Hillary advisor. If she is, indeed, the annointed one, I find that comforting. For Holbrooke is no monger.

Well Peg, there was some mighty good reasons why Richard Holbrooke lost out to Madelaine Albright under her Hubby's administration. I would imagine if she picks him for any top position Holbrooke's role in the genocide which occurred in East Timor will be roundly discussed

Please enlighten me.

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/sunil.htm
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2001/0102wolfowitz.html
http://www.etan.org/et2000a/february/1-6/1oped.htm
http://rastibini.blogspot.com/2007/02/murd...-at-maxmur.html
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/cra0635.htm

We have lost 3,400...but it's a hell-o-alot
better than 58,000...we still have time...
we can still redeploy with honor.

That's what I want to leave for the families...
that's what I want to leave for the soldiers.

If al-Queda rises...well, we can kill more.
We know how to kill...we are proficient..training.

Brothers, you have fought well. We can stay engaged.

Bury your dead, know we will not make their sacrifice
worthless...if we redeploy we can chose our strikes...
we can make al-Queda suffer...we can terrorize too.

Let us fight a guerilla war...some of us have learned how...
let us pull back...and await the bluster, the assumed
victory of insurgents...before we drop a hammer on 'em.

The US ammo manufacterers are stilll tops.
GIs are still Widow-makers...let them pose...
let us work...and watch the results. As we go...we will
teach...the price of insurgency...to make them vets.

We all must learn...it ain't free, but it's real. The US was here...
write Iraqi history...and remember, the US was there.
And, can return.