This piece from USMC Lt. General James T. Conway caught my attention for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is a piece of blazingly bright reason on a subject that most of the media severely misreports. Secondly, the Chief had the privilige of knowing Gen. Conway many years ago in St. Louis at Roosevelt H.S., where he graduated in ’65, a year behind the Chief’s class. He was determined already to pursue a military career, and already was pursuing (and achieving) excellence in a number of ways. Obviously he has continued to do so.
This piece is just terrific. General Conway shows that unlike the MSM, he has acquired some real situational awareness over there:
One hundred and forty-four years ago last month, the first major battle of the American Civil War had been joined on a small stream named Bull Run, outside Washington D.C. As the fighting neared its climax, a Confederate staff officer galloped his horse up Henry Hill and hailed Brigadier General Thomas Jackson. He shouted above the din of cannon and musketry, “Sir, I fear the battle is lost.”
Jackson, astride his horse near the crest of the ridge watching the advancing Union brigades, looked over his shoulder at his own brigade of Virginians on the reverse slope, lying prone but at the ready. He then turned his gaze on the officer and responded in a low voice, “You may think it, Sir, but you had best not say it to those troops!”
Jackson’s words of so long ago still contain sound advice for those journalists, pundits, and official visitors who journey to Iraq. If you have any misgivings that the Coalition and Iraqi Forces are losing this war against insurgents and terrorists, then you had better not say so in their presence-lest you attract a hostile crowd.
The fact is, they get it. They are closest to the action, they feel the momentum shifts, and they know when they have taken the best the enemy can dish out. They know what victory looks like and smells like-and they know it’s only a matter of time.
Read the rest of it! It’s definitely grist for the mill to counteract the moonbat seditious defeatism that dominates the MSM and the Donks’ dominant left wing.