While Americans have collectively been wringing their hands and fretting over how to respond to the recent very tragic South Carolina church shooting, many have blamed a relic of our distant past for everything racial that ails America.
The Confederate battle flag has become an emblem of our evil past, and calls for everything ‘Confederate’ to be expunged from American society has begun to reach a fevered pitch.
It seems those calling for this erasure of history believe its removal will solve our nations racial troubles, when in reality it will only salve for some the divide between races that has been building now for six years under the Obama administration.
Like many Americans at the time of the War of the Rebellion whose families fought for both sides, I too have ancestors who served bravely for both the Union and the Confederacy. Both wounded in battle at some of the major engagements that occurred during that terrible time in our nation’s history.
Just as I am proud of my Great-Grandfather Sergeant Henry Wilber who serving for the Army of the Potomac and was wounded at both Antietam and Gettysburg, I too am proud of my Great-Grandfather Captain Henry Guibor, who was seriously wounded at Grand Gulf, and who commanded Guibor’s Battery under the Confederate Battle Flag all the way until the end of the war.
Neither all Rebels nor all Yankees necessarily fought either to preserve the institution of slavery, or rid that blemish on American history, but the heritage of bravery that they and thousands of others on both sides displayed transcends any simple relic now adorning license plates, or hanging on the wall of taverns all across America.
As one who considers himself to be a patriotic American, and while recognizing the many arguments and protestations of those who would continue to fly the Confederate Battle Flag, the reality is that very flag represents what was then an act of treason and insurrection against the United States of America. Just as the first Americans who flew the original Star Bangled Banner were committing treason against the Crown during our Revolutionary War.
One thing though is abundantly clear, Americans are being distracted by this new divisive issue seemingly created out of thin air, and which is being used by the Obama administration to further divide us and distract us from grave issues facing this nation.
The Obama Administration seems intent on bringing home a nuclear deal with Iran, regardless of the conditions being insisted on by the Islamic Republic, which offer no guarantees that they will cease their efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Their often stated intentions of destroying the “Little Satan” Israel, as well as the “Big Satan” the United State of America, should be taken at face value. Iran has done nothing since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to change its position and its ultimate goal.
So while we are distracted by this shiny object off on the periphery, the Obama administration appears to be on the threshold of trading American national security simply in order to obtain some perceived legacy foreign policy achievement for the Obama presidency.
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