October 30, 2006 - The Bush Administration is bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. No, the policy has not changed and the Texan Commander-in-Chief has not decided to cut and run. Instead he is steadily withdrawing troops from the combat zones and redeploying them. 3,152 have been withdrawn and redeployed to Arlington National and other cemeteries across the US. At least 22, 265 have been withdrawn and redeployed to Walter Reed and other military hospitals across the United States. These soldiers, airmen, seamen, and marines did not cut and run. They left the ability to run on the bloody Iraqi sands. But they have come home from the war.

Major L. Tammy Duckworth came home. She is one of the 22,265 who came home and left part of them behind. She is the Democratic candidate to succeed Henry Hyde representing Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District. Her Republican opponent, a State Senator with impeccable conservative credentials claims that she will “cut and run”. Major Duckworth is not able to “cut and run” on the two legs she left behind in Iraq but that did not stop the President from echoing that mantra when he came for a fundraiser last week. Major Duckworth came home and she is running and leading her opponent in this solidly Republican district.

Don’t make any mistake about it. George Bush is bringing the troops home. They come home lying in lonely stillness in the cargo holds of aircraft landing in the dark of night that they not be seen. They come home in the hospital planes with morphine drips running in their veins to make tolerable the intolerable pain. Many, like Major Duckworth, will not again run in a meadow with a husband or wife. Many will not again see a sweetheart’s face. Many are left to an existence that can no longer be called a life waiting for their place in that long file leading to the grave marching to the beat of a muffled drum.

Yes, they are coming home. They are the forgotten men and women of their nation’s service. When last did President Bush salute as taps sounded at Arlington? When last did Vice President Cheney walk the wards of Walter Reed, to sit at the bedside of a blinded soldier? If you seek heroes in all of this they are not in the seats of the mighty. If you listen on the wind blowing across the Potomac from Arlington you will hear their stilled voices as they ask someone to tell them why.

It is their homecoming for they have indeed come home.