Like a lot of Americans, when the Vietnam War ended, I just shut up. I let the liberals control the dialogue. When they said the things about our troops, some of the same things I hear even on Free Republic, I didn’t say anything.
To my shame, and the shame of many of my countrymen, we sat and did nothing while their effort, their mission, and their blood was slandered.
To my shame, I said nothing.
I came to a decision that I was not going to let that happen again. I was not going to allow honorable, hard-working, and dedicated men get slandered and abused for doing what their country had asked them to do.
No more Vietnams, but not in the way the Liberals mean it.
Every single man who lost his youth, his blood, or his life in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as every one who lost his life in some corner of the world during the Cold War, died for something. They MEANT something, and what they were doing was important and necessary. Not every man who dies in the service of his country dies doing something important, significant or specifically meaningful.
But they all died for the same principle: Freedom is not Free. It takes money, treasure, and often blood to be strong, watchful and prepared, sometimes lots of all three.
Weakness invites aggression.
Those men who died in Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately died of perception of weakness and a lack of readiness. No thinking person can imagine we would have ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan if there had been no 9/11. It would never have happened. But 9/11 did happen, and all the deaths, injuries and trauma suffered by our troops happened because we had to answer force with force.
9/11 was not another Pearl Harbor, it was terrorism. But I guarantee, the weakness and dissolution displayed by liberal democrats in power is inviting our enemies to attack us, and they will. ISIS, Al Queda or whomever may be composed of 7th century savages, ignoramuses who can’t operate machinery, indoor plumbing, or whatever, but there is one specific thing they are very good at, and that is spotting weakness.
And we have been displaying it in spades since George W. Bush left office. He may have been lacking in a lot of conservative respects, but our enemies weren’t perceiving him as an indecisive weakling, and he wasn’t acting the part. That isn’t the case with the current administration.
So, those men who died fighting, died because they are the ones manning the parapets. They have done it night and day for us, all over the world. Their family life suffers. They don’t get great pay. It is dangerous work, even in peacetime. But they have signed up and gone out and done it.
THAT means something, and people who don’t see that and disparage them and their mission, they are the worst. They reap the benefits without imparting the necessary and deserved moral subscription to those who serve.
THAT is shameful.
