I have been blessed to have the unique honor of personally knowing some Great Americans, and I cannot help but be reminded right now of one in particular, a Retired Major General from the Ohio National Guard who, when we were in the throes of executing upon a long contemplated plan, would announce that he was “going on radio silence.” The time for talking and planning was over and now it was time to get the job done. No more input was required or accepted.

Many of you will no doubt know where I am going with this, and clearly I raise this point to talk about what it means to “stay the course.” The Democrats and their allies in the media have tried to conjure up an image of the vast might of the United States Army sitting on their backsides day after day receiving no new orders and doing nothing more or less than exactly what they did the day before.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Just like “Mission Accomplished” did not refer to the struggle as a whole, but rather one significant portion of it, likewise, “Stay the Course” refers to the overall mission of creating a stable democracy in Iraq. The daily tactics, however, are constantly changing to meet the needs of the situation. After all, as has been famously said; “no plan survives contact with the enemy.”

To me, the height of irresponsibility is when a hundred spineless, gutless excuses for politicians sitting in the U.S. Senate - men and women who rather than aspiring to the founding ideals of this Country, espoused by men with names like Richard Henry Lee, Robert Morris, Philip John Schuyler, and Charles Carroll; men who signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Revolutionary Army and all of whom were themselves Senators - debate conflicting, scurrilous and pointless resolutions from the safety of the U.S. Capital, while each meaningless and cowardly word is like a dagger into the heart of all the brave men and woman who are risking their lives to defend this Great Nation, and the families that they have left behind.

Fast forward 200 plus years as we find ourselves at the beginning of the 2008 Presidential campaign and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Junior Senator from New York, a woman who was once (and may still be) the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for the President of the United States, in referring to the War in Iraq, said “The President has said this is going to be left to his successor. I think it’s the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it. This was his decision to go to war . . . and we should expect him to extricate our Country from this before he leaves office.”

As if Wars can be fought on timetables, and fit themselves neatly into 4 and 8 year Presidential Terms.

First of all, let us not forget that it was the Democrats, who in the last war that they insisted on labeling a quagmire, blissfully and without remorse, left that war to their successors - Kennedy to Johnson and Johnson to Nixon. Only when Nixon actually tried to win the war, did the Democrat controlled Congress cut off funding for the war. For the eight years of the Kennedy/Johnson Presidencies, despite also having control of the House and Senate, the war blundered on.

Secondly, Bush believes in the mission and knows that we have to win this war. He is not passing it on for others to fix, and is most likely not relishing the possibility of passing it on to a rival administration to screw up. Unlike some others, President Bush knows that Wars don’t happen on schedule, and he has rightly indicated that this is a struggle that will go beyond his tenure as President.

Finally, as regards Ms. Clinton, I would conjecture that her resentment is not all that it seems. After all, logically, if she really believes that the war is wrong and that the best solution would be to bring all the troops home, then logically one would have to conclude that nothing would please her more than for her first official act as President of the United States to be to pull the plug on Iraq.

Why then would she insist that President Bush do it before the end of his term?

Because she is a calculating pragmatist and she wants to avoid the possibility that doing so, as is most likely, would make the situation far worse, forcing her to take the heat. She would much prefer to force President Bush to bring the troops home before victory is achieved. That way she can blame him both for losing the War, and for what everybody knows would immediately ensue; A Sectarian Bloodbath played out on the evening news. For her, it is not about winning or losing in Iraq. It is simply about making George Bush look bad and making sure that she doesn’t.

That is the ultimate cowardice

Now amongst other unseemly sights, we have this same Senate of which Ms. Clinton is a member, voting overwhelmingly to send Lt. General David Petraeus, by all accounts an intelligent, decent and honorable man, to take over the U.S. command in Iraq, all the while denouncing the troop surge that he, himself recommended as being the key to victory.

The Democrats seem to have no qualms about sending mixed messages to our own Generals with whom they task the mission at hand and then wonder why they are accused of not supporting the troops. We send mixed messages to our Allies; we send mixed messages to our Enemies; and we send mixed messages to our own troops.

Truly that is the height of Irresponsibility