Let the Eagle Soar

Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar!

--John Ashcroft, "Let the Eagle Soar"


Near the beginning of the war a colleague posted on his office door a cartoon of a bald eagle sitting on a stool sharpening his talons with a file. The implication was clear: after 9.11, it was lex talionis time. As our late, great Attorney General John "Jaysus!" Ashcroft put it, "Let the mighty eagle soar!"

The other day I was driving through the countryside, glimpsed in the distance a red-tailed hawk being tormented in flight by a group of blackbirds. The majestic hawk was soaring and swooping, doing its best to evade the smaller birds, who were darting in, pecking the hawk viciously, then darting out again -- instinctive guerilla tactics. The hawk was helpless. All it could do is keep flying and hope the blackbirds would eventually grow tired of the game and desist.

Which is the better analogy for our military and its predicament in Iraq, Ashcroft's triumphant eagle or my beleaguered hawk?