Two Christmas time pictures

Here's a picture showing tsunami survivors pray at Marina beach to commemorate the third anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami published in National Post today. According to the paper, "On Dec. 26, 2004, giant waves triggered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded pulverized villages along Indian Ocean shores, killing or leaving missing about 230,000 people."
Here's another significant historical Christmas time picture that all American should remember because it's a Christmas story at the birth of the U.S.A. but very few Americans know! (Hat-tip Power Line.)

Two historical facts: First

In May 1782, Colonel Lewis Nicola had urged Washington to accept the responsibility of becoming king of the United States.

And then:

On December 23, 1783, Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief to the Continental army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, where Congress was assembled. Washington could have seized the moment to don the mantle of a tyrant; instead he chose to return to private life. Washington concluded his brief remarks:

I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my Official life, by commending the Interests of our dearest Country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them, to his holy keeping.

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.

According to Thomas Fleming:

Thomas Jefferson, author of the greatest of these declarations, witnessed this drama as a delegate from Virginia. Intuitively, he understood its historic dimension. "The moderation. . . . of a single character," he later wrote, "probably prevented this revolution from being closed, as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish."

Does any one have any doubt why the United States of America is the greatest country of the universe? Because we have such truly great leaders at the birth of our great country!