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Sunday, August 21, 2005

Triumph Over All Hell

“War is all hell.”
~ William Tecumseh Sherman

Civil War General Sherman's quote has been popularized without the quantifying term "all"--most of us have heard simply that "war is hell." But Gen. Sherman, who was so well acquainted with the earthly hell we call war, understood that it is the totality of hell. War contains the all of the complete cruelty, the abject misery, the ceaseless suffering, the bottomless grief--in fact, everything painful and poisonous that hell would hold.

Sixty years ago, in January 1945, the most successful rescue mission in U.S. military history was carried out as the surviving POWs of the Bataan Death March were saved in a daring operation by Army Rangers. The movie "The Great Raid" tells this inspiring story with a raw honesty and ruthless intensity that draws an agonizing mozaic of the horror that is war.

This movie also shows us the heights to which human courage and heroism can soar, as so often happens in war. "The Great Raid" is a difficult movie to watch, but it is an uplifting story that deserves to be told. It needs to be told, especially today when our history is being rewritten according to elite agendas. I hope many millions of Americans will see this movie.

War is all hell, but knowledge is all power.