Jeremy_White's blog

As I found myself pressed up against a metal fence at President Obama’s inauguration, the air slowly being squeezed out of me by the force of several thousand bodies pushing against one another, I found myself wondering: what if this had been an evacuation instead of a celebration?

As 2007 came to a close, America's attention focused primarily on the re-emergence of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as on the highest level of troop casualties since the Vietnam War. It is thus not surprising that in this somber atmosphere of war and bloodshed, one of the most important speeches ever delivered by an acting Secretary of Defense went largely unnoticed.