Exit Plans

My grandpappy, reading his mornin’ paper, and I were sitting at the kitchen table one cold wintry day awaiting grandma’s delicious breakfast as she worked over that wooden stove. Then all of a sudden both grandma and I heard a loud grumble coming from the depth of grandpappy’s throat. Grandma just turned and looked at me with a knowing smile. She then did as she always does at these times by saying

" Alright pa, what did you find to gripe about today?"

Upon being given his cue to speak grandpappy slowly folded his paper down and looked straight at me as grandma went back to finishing her chore. Though she may have been doing something else and seemingly ignoring her man I knew her ears were wide open to the words he was about to speak.

"Boy, when war has been declared a leader needs to lead his country into war with but one idea. He must lead his country into battle planning to win and only win. That needs to be his one and only thought. Anything less than that is to lead a nation into war planning only to lose. War is not a game. There is no such thing as ties in war."

He then paused a couple of seconds to allow these words to sink into my mind before speaking on

" Each war has one conclusion in common with every war fought. The winner of that war wins the right to rule. This is the agreed upon basis of surrender. And the loser of that war determines the time of surrender not the winner. This is the one truth of war that no one can deny. The powerful declare it and the powerless surrender to it."

With that said my grandpappy opened up his paper and went back to reading. Grandma seeing me puzzled at what he said as she brought breakfast to the table just smiled at me and said

" What your grandpappy is griping about is reading that there are some in congress who advocate pulling our troops out of Iraq now. To do that would be the same as declaring we surrender and that the ‘insurgents’ have won the war. And that isn’t why we sent our troops to Iraq. We sent them there to come home as winners not losers. We sent them there so that when they came home they would come home proud of the job they did and to a people who were proud of them for doing the job that they were trained to do.

There are some in congress that are demanding an ‘exit plan’ too. Only losers need an ‘exit plan’. President Bush did not send the troops to Iraq to become losers or failures. He witnessed the last time our boys came home as losers and he has too much respect for the troops to allow that to happen again.

The Iraqi people would be the greatest losers though. If the troops come home as losers we will have failed the Iraqis even more because they will no longer be able to rule themselves but be ruled over by the insurgents. And they will not be very kind to those that opposed them. "

Nodding in understanding, I gave grandma a big smile and dug into the delicious vittles that she had so lovingly cooked for her family this fine brisk morning.