Honor Their Sacrifice

"We'll honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists."

- George Walker Bush, Salt Lake City, Utah 8/22/05

* Eerily similar words were used by other Presidents and their administrations in their times. The main difference is that the bogeymen then were ‘communists’ instead of ‘terrorists’:

Lyndon Baines Johnson - 1963 - 1969 (refused to run again)

Richard Milhous Nixon - 1969 - 1974 (resigned in disgrace)

and one fine day: "George Walker Bush - 2000 - 200[?] (tried & convicted for war crimes, now serving life without parole at Abu Gharib Prison in Iraq)"

What ALL THREE meant was: “Let’s keep sending young Americans off to die (just so long as it isn’t our own kids, or those of other high-ranking politicians) - in this war for the selfish financial interests of our political supporters.”

Finally, after nearly 60,000 American deaths in Vietnam, another American President - Gerald Rudolph Ford - “who played too much football without a helmet” in the words of LBJ - was forced to bring our boys and girls home in what is widely viewed as and amounted to a defeat in a foreign war.

Nearly 60,000 died then. Hundreds of thousands were wounded - and many, many thousands crippled for life and a whole generation of Americans traumatized. How many will it take this time?

* Another eerie similarity is that both the Vietnam War and our current “War President’s” war in Iraq were both begun with lies, deception and false pretenses.

* “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana

* "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind... And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
- William Shakespeare

“I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.”
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)