Leadership: Honor the Fallen

Props to Holden at First Draft for making me aware of this.

In this country, we had a chance to elect a man who knows the full effects of bad policy decisions, by the powerful, upon those called to enact their policies and strategems. We had a chance to elect a man who knows what it is like to fight in wars, to be afraid, to have a buddy killed, and even the weight of killing someone before they killed you.

We had a man who respects those called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice, no matter whether it was at the same time he was in that situation, or later when another generation is required to hold that risk.


Penelope Gavriel (bottom L) kisses the U.S. flag that draped the casket of her son, Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, as U.S. Senators' Ted Kennedy, D-MA, and John Kerry , D-MA, stand alongside other family members during his honor guard funeral at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington DC, December 2, 2004. Gavriel, from Haverhill, Massachusetts, died November 19 while fighting in Al Anbar Province in Iraq.



But instead we elected a feckless frat boy.

Minutes before the speech [declaring war], an internal television monitor at the White House showed the President pumping his fist.

"Feels good," he said.

Congratulations my fellow Americans, congratu--fucking--lations.