A Few Shiny Pebbles

In “Petraeus rebuffs 'war criminal' critics”, on Breitbart.com, I read:

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, hit back Wednesday at anti-war critics who accused him of being a White House stooge during an emotive two days of testimony at Congress.

As Petraeus and Baghdad ambassador Ryan Crocker prepared to deliver their appraisal of Iraq to US lawmakers on Monday, left-wing group MoveOn.org took out a full-page newspaper advertisement to denounce "General Betray Us."

At a news conference following the gruelling sessions in Congress, Petraeus said an old friend had sent him a copy of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" -- which speaks of treating those "two impostors," triumph and defeat, just the same.

"I took some strength, I think, from that," the four-star general said.

"Needless to say, to state the obvious, I disagree with the message of those who are exercising the First Amendment right (to free speech) that generations of soldiers have sought to preserve for Americans.

Gen. Petraeus’s use of the poem “If”, by Rudyard Kipling, reminded me that when I was a kid I used to hang a poem on the kitchen curtains in front of me so that I could memorize it while I washed the dishes each day. I learned a lot of poems that way. One of my favorites was Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, and when I read Petraeus’s statement, I thought it was very clever of him to paraphrase the part he did, because the next two lines are perfect for what has been happening the past few days and the MoveOn ad that defamed him:

[. . .] If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the Truth you've spoken Twisted by Knaves to make a trap for Fools, [. . .]

How incredibly appropriate! As The Conservative Cat Blog point out, it’s important to understand what’s happening in Iraq, but the Main Stream Media is filled, not with news, but with anecdotes. MSM anecdotes are intended to make our military look as bad as possible, but they are not at all hard news about the direction of the war. The Conservative Cat writes:

To conservatives, this fuzzy understanding is not a very big problem. The question we [Conservatives] ask is not how is it going, but what do we need to do to win. The anecdotes are just blips on the radar. To the anti-war movement, however, the lack of reliable data is disastrous. To justify letting the terrorists win, they have to prove that America is losing. This leads to long diatribes about which anecdotes have the ring of truth and which are clearly self-serving lies engineered by neo-conservative mastermind Karl Rove. The mystery here is not why they're cooking the books to favor the terrorists, but why the public hasn't noticed this painfully obvious pattern.

The public is split about the war, but at least Petraeus has his mission clearly in mind, unlike some of those who are “questioning” him by making long, insulting speeches against him. This makes the beginning lines to the poem perfect for the General:

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; [. . .]

Having watched the hearings so far, I can say with emphasis that this perfectly describes Petraeus facing those Democrats—who oppose the war in Iraq only because they hope it will help them win in 2008—and, through the Media, groups such as MoveOn.org—who are trying to help Democrats gain that power: they have most certainly lost their heads. Of course, because this is America, their loss is only metaphorical; if they were under the control of the Islamists, any loss of heads would be literal and barbaric.

General Petraeus has spent his adult life fighting for America and our ideals, and he deserves to be honored, not insulted or worse. Well, now he is going back to his newest mission in an extraordinary career, and in doing so he meets the summation of the conclusion of the Kipling poem:

[…] If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run— Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man my son!

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, Rosemary's Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog's Weblog, Right Truth, The Populist, Nuke's News & Views, Shadowscope, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Colloquium, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Planck's Constant, The Pink Flamingo, and Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.