LRG, you can never tell what anyone thinks on the Internet from just one post, but if you read the story linked by the picture in my post about how the Spartans held the pass at Thermopylae against the Persians, you might begin to understand that my comments are sincere.
You see, Greece had been continually threatened by Persia since the battle of Marathon in 490bc, which they had just barely managed to win. By 480, a Greek statesman Themistocles warned his people that they had to be ready to fight on the ocean and at the borders.
To make a long story short, they went out to meet the Persians, and while they were finally overwhelmed (due to a betrayal by one of their own) at a distance away from Greece at the battle of Thermopylae, 300 fathers were asked to stay behind and slow down the advance of the Persians. Someone warned that the Persian archers alone could kill them all in a very short time with clouds of arrows that would darken the sky, and their leader, Leonidas retorted, "That's no problem -- we'll be fighting in the shade." They fought thousands and thousands of Persians, killing them one after another. Finally they were surrounded, weak, and bleeding. Xerxes shouted "Give us your weapons," to which the brave Leonidas said those famous lines that will burn in the American soul forever: Come and take them! After more Persians were slaughtered, eventually there were no Spartans left, and the rest is history. The retreating force went back to warn their countrymen, who prepared a defense that would hold.
Our story is the same today. We have a small force in Iraq telling the world that we will go anywhere, fight anyone, and sacrifice whatever it takes to defend the Republic. At some distance from home, they are meeting the pan-Arab fascists and the Islamic jihadis in their own territory. And they will find that even if they darken the sky with their WMDs, we will still fight them and win in the end.
And what do you mean about his buddies who are not coming home?
Some are not coming home, we know that. They were obedient to our laws -- the written ones involving fulfillment of contractual obligations -- and the unwritten one that says we fight to the death for our families and our freedoms. A monument still resides in the pass near Thermopylae with an inscription on it that simply says:
Stranger, bring the message to the Spartans that here
we remain, obedient to their orders.
