With Honor

I wrote this last year, but it's still all too relevant...

"I want us out, too, but I want us out with honor." - John McCain

Too late.

If you don't go in with honor, you can't find honor there to get out with. You can't find it by lying about how it all started and why you're still there. You can't find it by parading around in full body armor surrounded by guards and gunships. You can't find it by making up progress reports and then lying about whether the benchmarks you also made up have been met or not. You can't find it on Fox News, and you can't find it in orchestrated appearances in front of friendly audiences, and you can't find it in the words of generals who have sold themselves to the powers that be. You can't find it in columns by people who have changed their story a dozen times and still been wrong every time, and you can't find it in slaughtered civilians, cleansed city blocks, or blown up army vehicles. And you can't find it in wards of injured and neglected soldiers.

Honor isn't lying around the desert waiting to be found. It's not buried in treasure vaults, or hidden with mythical weapons, or scattered across the sands with the looted treasures of the ages.

If you don't take honor in with you, you can't leave with it.

You won't find honor until after you leave. It's back home, where you left it. And it badly needs polishing.