that even Communist-hating Americans cheered and proclaimed as heroes the few surviving inhabitants of that wretched place who in a state of near starvation and utter exhaustion fought like possessed demons from wrecked sewers and hollows scooped out of the frozen mud with whatever weapons they could find, and in suicidal attacks against Nazi infantry and armor, using only rifles, bits of salvaged explosive, shovels, pipes, and even their bare hands, destroyed the most powerful invasion force the world had ever seen.

How strange there are so many of us today who are horrified and uncomprehending when defenders of Iraq are willing to sacrifice their lives, and to defend their homes, their communities, their culture, their people, by whatever means necessary, and with only raw courage if that's all that remains to them, and how we regard as subhuman the superhuman sacrifices of these noble martyrs, and loudly complain about "Rules of War" violations when it is we who seek to "transform" a society and subjugate an entire people, just as Hitler was determined to do.

We have learned nothing. We surely have not absorbed the lessons of the past, but more importantly we have failed to recognize that honorable people will always defend to the last drop of blood that which is most precious to them - their soul, their identity, their universe. As a nation we have always admired and held as sacred the courage, sacrifice, and indominatable spirit that mark history's greatest heroes, the same qualities we are experiencing firsthand on the road to Baghdad. How strange there is no cheering or admiration now.