I made no accusations. I just asked you two questions. You could not answer, which tells me a lot. Your age range. It tells me your mindset and it also tells me you never served.
During the second world war if a family had someone in the service they had a small flag with a blue star in their front window. If they had lost a son or daughter the blue star was changed to gold. Almost every house had a flag in the window.
It had a lot to do with why everyone worked together and sacrificed together. It created a generation of young people that had to catch up because of the years spent in the service. It also created a generation of Americans that created more, and created more quickly a country that is basically what you see today. It also created a society that lost its innocence and gained a level of sophistication that has not happened since.
The first two characters on a serial number in the military tell, enlistee or draftee, officer or enlisted. The next character tells what part of the country you are from. That is all. Look at someones dog tag cause that is all that was left after someone paid the price.
You were lucky enough to have not served, that does not mean you are not patriotic. It just tells a me as a person you did not have life experiences that change the lives of veterans. The military was the best thing that ever happened to me other than the life I have had with my wife of 52 years.
I had my semiannual visit to the VA hospital last week. I am always touched with the visit. I am always more grateful, and the joy of being alive more prominent in my mind. You never hear two vets talking about costs and death. Instead they laugh. They laugh about wounds or handicaps they have. They talk about the units in which they served, the men they knew. You have to wait a lot in VA hospitals, but the waiting can really be uplifting. I always see people worse off than I. The staff at the VA can never do enough for me. I got my education because of the VA. When I was promoted to Sgt, I got my first management experience. It hit me rather abruptly when I received the stripes, the next day I was told to march 500 men to another town and get them settled. I went from a boy to a man very quickly.
Those stripes and the responsibility that came with it, had a lot to do with my success in my later life. It sure gave me an advantage in corporate life. I am sorry you never had that chance.
When I hear Vets talk of politics, I listen. I know where they are coming from. But I know every war is different, each one is on the job training for the servicemen and the people running the war. Everything is based on what we learned in the last war. Roosevelt ran WW2 with about 20 people and he was hated by the people. But he did not have a congress that was trying to make their bones. We were an isolationist nation. Wars evolve very quickly or you lose. The ultimate game of one up man ship. We did not have flak jackets, we had to worry about the piano wire that the Germans strung across the roads in an attempt to cut our heads off. If you watch old newsreels you will see jeeps with a pipe sticking up from the front bumper to cut the piano wire. Ieds are today's progression from piano wire.
The job of being commander in chief is not for the timid. All men have their individual problems and weaknesses. The job of president seems to bring out the worst of those. I watched Clinton become an old man and I am seeing George Bush go down the same path. What I have learned in life is I do not have the right to condemn any man unless I have walked down the same path he has. And neither do you.
The cost of war is based on the price we put on human life. In our culture the sky is the limit. So we use a $500,000.00 bomb to kill 10 people. We use it to keep the pilot out of harms way who's job it is to drop the bomb. In other cultures, they have not yet learned life's value.
Fly old glory on your front porch without fear. Just remember it is there because someone has kept the terror and destruction of war in a far off place. |
