Posted on 09/04/2004 6:25:05 PM PDT by risk
What Is A Vet?
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Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC |
| Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet? He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel. She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang. He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL. He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs. He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand. He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by. He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep. He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come. He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs. He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known. So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded. Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU". Remember November 11th is Veterans Day It is the soldier, not the reporter, |
And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.
Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.
Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.
ping: Already posted in followups elsewhere, but worth its own thread nonetheless.
Colin Powell has a great line to handle the liberator vs occupier nonsenes. Something like "We have not taken by occupation enough space to bury our dead that liberated them".
BTW - This year veterans day comes early. I figure 03NOV04.
I think I'm going to pass this along as one of those email runs.
Thank you both. I didn't know what Zell was quoting & I'm glad to have it. And I'm happy to be reminded of that really glorious line from Colin Powell. I heard him say that (to the UN, wasn't it?) & it took my breath away.
Thanks for the ping!
read later
Alan Simpson shamed Matthews into wetting his pants Thursday night, when Simpson got him to shut up long enough to repeat the origins of Miller's quote. I thought no one was ever going to do it.
I've always thought this was arrogant BS. Our liberties, as so ably expressed in our Constitution, come from our Creator. Soldiers (in free countries) protect those freedoms. And in oppressed countries, soldiers just as readily deny people their natural rights.
I agree with the general spirit of the original piece - our soldiers should be lauded for defending their country. But the day I owe the continued existence of my rights to anyone but God is the day I get out my guns.
SW
You're already in trouble, then. Schumer, Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, and a whole host of other congressional members believe you are wrong. To them, ownership of firearms is offered to you as priviledges of the state. Your gun ownership should be tracked, monitored, and you should be fingerprinted, evaluated, and licensed before you can be trusted own what few remaining weapons are legal. Furthermore, your family's self-defense is now the sole obligation and right of the state. Any use of force on your part to protect yourself will be carefully examined against their politically correct standards.
Feinstein has said that she would ban all private ownership of weapons if she could. Your faith in God's gift of freedom, and your confidence that God gave you the right to defend your life and your freedom mean nothing to these timid and quaking public figures. They would stand between you and your second amendment rights, instead offering the corrupt, imperfect vehicle of the state as your protector.
They would stand between us and our natural, instinctive, inborn right to defend ourselves, our communities, and our freedom. And they would do all of this in the name of a fragile safety that Benjamin Franklin would say is undeserved.
Stay safe!
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