Travelling through Atlanta airport yesterday, it has become apparent that I'm getting older. I was sitting at the bar watching some soldiers from the 101st walk through the airport. I could not help but notice how young the PFC's looked. I guess 18 is well, 18. Then it dawned on me that I'm now old enough to be most of their fathers.
Not sure why this is such a revelation, both my kids are older than that. I guess, for some reason, perhaps because it was a platoon size element, I noticed that damn, they are all just babies. Sadly, some won't be coming home to mom and dad. As they laughed and joked I wondered which one of them would not and I was sad.
During a recent debate with some that I served with, I was lamenting my son's inability to get his act together and enlist. One asked, "well, don't you feel its better than the alternative, which is perhaps him dying in some 3rd world shit hole and coming home in a body bag." Now there is food for thought.
Of course I don't want my son to die, but there is honor in military service and I think, and this is pure speculation, I would be mentally prepared for that outcome. Easier said than done, I've seen what losing my brother did to my mom and dad, so who knows. In a way, he is right, regardless of my boys transgressions, he is my son and I certainly would not want him dead.
This is the reality that our soldiers families have to deal with every day for the last 9 years. Scary shit.
Don't Ask Don't Tell
While with these same two guys I served with, one a 1/75 guy and one a SF 18D who is about to retire, this topic of course came up. Though, I'm not sure why I say "of course" its not like we sit around talking about gays all the time, but I digress..
Oh, its because Gates had made a statement about it that morning. It's a sticky ( no pun intended) subject but I think as the beer flowed we all decided that if that shit stayed at home, like our sex lives with our wives, then we did not really care if the guy smoked pole or not. He could either be technically and tactically proficient or he could not. No different than most "Joes". You kept the good ones, when you felt you had exhausted all resources to train and re train the bad ones, you sent them packing ( again no pun intended).
From what I can tell, I don't see it being repealed and I honestly don't know if it should be as my guess is there are probably quite a few gays who have served this country in the last 9 years with honor.
Current Events
How did I know that it would not be long before folks said that Assange was being set up and that Manning was a hero?
With regards to Wiki Leaks, listen folks, it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, the only way to prevent this would be to well, blow up the internet. Seriously, there is nothing safe now that we live in the digital age. While I as an American find what this web site does in bad taste, I'm really not that upset with the ass clown that runs it. What he says he is doing has no merit as compared to what he is acctually doing but if we like our instant data and the world does as broadband growth is exploding, in fact we as Americans are actually behind the rest in deployment, then the use of the internet will always have information that people assume is private but never truly will be.
Good for Amazon for booting them though, you don't have to support a site that seems to want to fuck over the country that allows them and Amazon to prosper. Regardless of what Julian says they are doing.
As for Manning, and no I won't call him PFC, and those who seem to think what he did was the "right thing". I'll remind you of this:
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
Don't give me any of the bullshit that the world needs to know everything he downloaded to shed light on things, because my guess is he knew what he was doing was a violation of the above code.
What both of these idiots ( and their supporters) should realize is that if they did this in many other countries they would both already be dead.
And I personally don't like this Jeremy Scahill yahoo and his witch hunt for Erik Prince or Blackwater. Does not take him long to tie the Wikileaks to BW.
"In 2006, twelve "tactical action operatives" from Blackwater were recruited for a secret JSOC raid inside Pakistan, targeting an Al Qaeda facility. The operation was code-named "Vibrant Fury." Which raises another issue: the activities described in the October 2009 cable very closely align with what a US military intelligence source, a US special forces source and a former Blackwater executive told The Nation in November 2009, namely that JSOC was running an operation in Pakistan where "members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, 'snatch and grabs' of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.…"
If interested you can read the rest of his opinion piece here
Jurena..out
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