Washington – It’s been a long slog through unfriendly terrain, but the top U.S. commander in Iraq had a poem from Rudyard Kip ling to give him strength as he faced pointed questions from Congress and sharp attacks from opponents of the Iraq war this week.
Gen. David Petraeus told reporters Wednesday that a friend from his hometown – Cornwall on Hudson, N.Y. – sent him a copy of the poem “If” the day a newspaper ad from came out accusing him of “cooking the books” on the troop cuts for the White House. The ad offered the rhyme: “General Petraeus or General Betray Us.”
Petraeus said he still carried the poem, noting that it “might be worth looking at because I took some strength I think from that.”
The poem seems fitting:
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.
…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
He said some of the ad “was just flat completely wrong and the rest is, at least, more than arguable.”
