Freedom Isn't Free
I read about four magazines, 2 books, and 6 newspapers during the course of a week.
In the March issue of HARPERS, Kathy Dobie wrote on military desertion (AWOL In America)in which she portrayed the Army as "a mass of dimwitted natural born killers". This after only spending a half day at a reception center!
The article was unbalanced, and stank of "I hate Bush, What the Fuck are we doing in Iraq" liberal bias.
There is no doubt that throughout the recent history of our Military. young men have been naive when they joined. Many cases, poverty and the desire to access better higher education is a motivating factor. There are a small minisicule percentage of those who join who commit suicide, die during bootcamp, incurr panic attacks, turn to drugs, and drink heavily. But if the Military is a microcosm of the macrocosm, a smaller version of the bigger society, than we need to understand that in our macrosociety, these kind of events happen MORE often. People commit suicide, drown, incur panic attacks, turn to drugs and alcohol, and often there is collatoral damage inflicted on those whose path they happen to cross or share.
In this month's HARPER, two letters to the editors about this story have been printed.I was particularly struck by what Mark Fauldauer wrote:
"Like the young men Dobie writes about, I was naive when I joined the Army, everyone is. I remember being scared in basic training.....All the talk of glory of killing sounded like some savage tribe banging war drums in an effort to psyche themselves up.
........I was twenty when I went in, had no direction in life. The military seemed a logical choice for me. I marveled at how clueless many of the recruits were when they arrived. There were many who left, and its a good thing, too: its scary to go to war with men who don't belong there"
He goes on to say that UNLIKE Dobie's portrayel, "MOST of the men he knew were intelligent, peaceful types who believed, however corny it may sound, that Freedom isn't free. "
"The problem isnt the Army", he goes on to say, "its that our society, in times of peace, take security for granted"!
Ain't that the truth!
What astounds me is that even after 9/11....half this country is as clueless and naive as some of those that entered the Army.Unfortunately, this completely places the responsibilty to protect this country, a responsibility that all should share willingly in exchange for the freedoms enjoyed, on the few that aren't myopic, and it also becomes encumbent up those few, to keep repeating what the ACLU, left wing activists, the MSM, and Hollywood Elites, seem to have forgotten or simply chose to deny: FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!
Thank you Mark, and all our men and women now deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world, for your service to this country, and for always reminding us that " FREEDOM ISN'T FREE".
In the March issue of HARPERS, Kathy Dobie wrote on military desertion (AWOL In America)in which she portrayed the Army as "a mass of dimwitted natural born killers". This after only spending a half day at a reception center!
The article was unbalanced, and stank of "I hate Bush, What the Fuck are we doing in Iraq" liberal bias.
There is no doubt that throughout the recent history of our Military. young men have been naive when they joined. Many cases, poverty and the desire to access better higher education is a motivating factor. There are a small minisicule percentage of those who join who commit suicide, die during bootcamp, incurr panic attacks, turn to drugs, and drink heavily. But if the Military is a microcosm of the macrocosm, a smaller version of the bigger society, than we need to understand that in our macrosociety, these kind of events happen MORE often. People commit suicide, drown, incur panic attacks, turn to drugs and alcohol, and often there is collatoral damage inflicted on those whose path they happen to cross or share.
In this month's HARPER, two letters to the editors about this story have been printed.I was particularly struck by what Mark Fauldauer wrote:
"Like the young men Dobie writes about, I was naive when I joined the Army, everyone is. I remember being scared in basic training.....All the talk of glory of killing sounded like some savage tribe banging war drums in an effort to psyche themselves up.
........I was twenty when I went in, had no direction in life. The military seemed a logical choice for me. I marveled at how clueless many of the recruits were when they arrived. There were many who left, and its a good thing, too: its scary to go to war with men who don't belong there"
He goes on to say that UNLIKE Dobie's portrayel, "MOST of the men he knew were intelligent, peaceful types who believed, however corny it may sound, that Freedom isn't free. "
"The problem isnt the Army", he goes on to say, "its that our society, in times of peace, take security for granted"!
Ain't that the truth!
What astounds me is that even after 9/11....half this country is as clueless and naive as some of those that entered the Army.Unfortunately, this completely places the responsibilty to protect this country, a responsibility that all should share willingly in exchange for the freedoms enjoyed, on the few that aren't myopic, and it also becomes encumbent up those few, to keep repeating what the ACLU, left wing activists, the MSM, and Hollywood Elites, seem to have forgotten or simply chose to deny: FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!
Thank you Mark, and all our men and women now deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world, for your service to this country, and for always reminding us that " FREEDOM ISN'T FREE".
posted by DangerGirl @ 5/22/2005 08:44:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home