Bring 'em on.....

The bloodiest day of the Civil War was the battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), September 17, 1862. Oh that that day were here again! That combat was "one of the most sanguinary and desperate in the whole war." "Every horse and ½ of the men fell." Yet commanders who were able to forget the events of the day "supped heartily and slept profoundly." One regiment entered the arena with 325 men and 203 (63%) were lost - killed or wounded. "What a pity" an observer wrote, "to spoil with bullets such a scene of martial beauty." Casualties suffered by the North and South totaled about 22,000.

Didn’t we know then how to fight and love it? Would that that were true about the war in Iraq. Our young warriors are still game but they are hamstrung by wimpy politicians, politically correctness and unrealistic, undesirable and detrimental conditions for battle against terrorists - or as we say today, engagement with the enemy.

There will always be war. An 18th century English essayist and poet Joseph Addison wrote about the famous 1704 battle of Blenheim: "Unbounded courage and compassion joined, Tempering each other in the victor’s mind, Alternately proclaim him good and great, And make the hero and the man complete." Victory over the enemy is all that should become us as Americans.