How to Make Honor out of a Sow’s Ear

(Good enough for The Stamford Eagle Gazette, Mr Huntzberger – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I don’t write diaries much these days but I wanted to write this one this morning.  I don’t watch Fox News Republican debates,  I don’t even watch Fox News Democratic debates….heh! Sun Tzu is not impressed with my avoidance of knowing my enemy but did he get saddled with my gag reflex?  CNN was kind though this morning and while I was trimming my husband’s hair they put this clip up……Huckabee vs. Paul on the idea of an unsurge and leaving Iraq.  Mike Huckabee seems to know something about honor that I don’t.

Like most everything in my adult years now I must deal with the fact that honor is also in the eye of the beholder.  I think it is wonderful for individuals and nations to be responsible for their actions and a few Americans in charge of America did choose to break Iraq and then used the power at their fingertips to do so, but how is the surge fixing Iraq and what is our honorable mission in Iraq other than some slangy verb that is also the name of a really gross glow in the dark soft drink? And further more what happened Noble Cause?  I digress though, getting back to honor.

First of all Mike Huckabee wants us all to know that, of everybody on that Fox News stage, Senator McCain understands the word honor.  Senator McCain understands that Mike Huckabee is a pathetic nonserving rhetoric grinding chickenhawk loser who high jacked McCain’s own service and POW experience.  I notice John McCain making a note to self to pay Huckabee back for it and include a very high rate of accrued interest.

Then Huckabee directly confronted Texas Rep. Ron Paul on his position for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq starting with this:

“Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion for historians, but we’re there. We bought it because we broke it,” he said. “We’ve got a responsibility to the honor of this country and the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor they deserve.”

Since honor can mean a lot of intended things to word flinging people I need to substitute the Merriam-Webster definition of the noun honor in this Huckabee spiel.

“Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion for historians, but we’re there. We bought it because we broke it,” he said. “We’ve got a responsibility to the good name or public esteem of this country and the good name or public esteem of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and our military to not leave them with anything less than the good name or public esteem they deserve.”

After forged yellow cake documents and Downing Street memos and lies about Saddam’s involvement in 9/11 I’m not sure how applying more military force to Iraqis is being responsible to the good name or public esteem of the United States of America.  It is the application of military force that has brought us and bought us all this shame.  Are we going to use it and use it and use it until someday somehow we can point to one something “good” it has done, and will that one something then magically make all of the military force and murdering and torturing and collateral death and arresting/imprisoning of whole families to include children for nothing more than Baathist affiliation a good thing?  I was very good in Math, not so good in Language…..maybe that is why I just can’t get the Governor’s words to add up.  And just because we leave Iraq doesn’t mean that we haven’t left our soldiers who have served in Iraq or our military with the good name and public esteem they deserve.

Soldiering for the U.S.A. is a job.  Granted, some of us who are too selfish to imagine or pledge sacrificing ourselves for the protection of the tribe (that would be me) tend to aggrandize such selfless service.  See, I’m afraid that if I don’t talk these fools up a lot they might decide to not cover my ass for me and then I might have to pick up a big stick or something and foul my KARMA.  For my husband though it is a job, he accepts easily that real threats can and do exist out there for the tribe and it is fairly effortless for him to don the uniform.  Even with my bigmouth ways my husband’s career has done nothing these past few years but blossom.  I watch from the sidelines as several different areas of the Pentagon jockey to own him in his civilian years as he retires soon.  He understands the Geneva Conventions and has dedicated self to upholding them on the job and in all jobs he would ever hold, he has read the Constitution of the United States more times than I ever have and I’m sure in the next soldier’s opinion fight he has with another soldier they will all read it again ;), he has pledged his life to protecting the tribe USA and when other soldiers break the law the only thing that reflects badly on him is when those soldiers are not held fully accountable and the only thing that steals his good name and public esteem as a soldier is when his leadership isn’t held accountable for lawlessness.  He still feels that he can recover from such mishaps though because damn it America is a great place and when we have SHIT LEADERS we aren’t stuck with them forever and a new day is always dawning in America.  It is hard waking up daily to such sickening optimism but I’m working on it.

Sadly Huckabee had a second volley to fire at the only sane Republican candidate on the Fox News stage.

“Congressman, we are one nation. We can’t be divided. We have to be one nation under God. That means if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country.”

DRAFT?!!!  At this point with as broken as the military is and knowing that this spring we are completely sprung the only thing that Huckabee’s words can mean is DRAFT!  Prattle on thin boy!  All the boys in Iraq are even thinner!