Washington Post Columnist Insults America's Armed Forces

Our world has become a place in which even the peaceful have no voice in the oceans of discord. People who have looked and seen are influenced to doubt what they have seen. Many think to announce actions taken by assertive men as fear-stricken and profile them with descriptions of panic and even accuse them of a predisposition to do violence. By that very orientation I know the anti war crowd is incorrect. I have known Soldiers and Marines all of my life. They are the most peaceloving people on earth. In the name of fear those who see that lines must be drawn and stood steadfastly upon some think to do harm to the principals upon which the warriors of our society must now stand affixed shoulder to shoulder. Making war is not violent. What happens when war must be done and is not is what is violent.

Some in our world would rather rip down the principals upon which society has been built in order to establish a mock peace. No peace exists anywhere if the principals of peace and that which characterizes it is not upheld and mightily defended everywhere.

When some think to do death, make war, or otherwise dismantle the fabric with which society has been established they must come to public scrutiny. A determination must be made as to whether or not they wish to serve a public good or a self devised agenda of their own for selfish reasons.

Such an occurrence has arisen at the Washington Post. A columnist at the Post has written and subsequently had published by the Post an article that discourages the people who know things other than what he knows and causes them distress in that theirs is a job of sacrifice and selflessness for little or no financial gain. For them to prevail they need from us impeccability with our word. We must support them to bring them home. They do not want to come home until the job is done and they cannot do the job if we do not support them. How would a writer like it if someone came in the middle of their work and disturbed them from completing their work? A warrior's work is no less valid because an argument can be imagined against the validity of that work.

William M. Arkin of the Post wrote that our "mercenary" military is a menace and all that they do is ill-conceived. There is no thing that I would ever do to silence Mr Arkin. I like for the selfish and self inflating elite to announce their ignorance and to trumpet their erred concoctions of reality. It often results in their own hate, anger and or fear emerging and exposing them for what they are. It is much like the US Presidential hopeful, the man J. Kerry when he made his senseless comment regarding our warriors being somehow less of a persons and less valued because they are in Iraq rather than in one of the schools that he feels they would be more valuable in "if they worked hard." Huh, man J. Kerry, you must have had a different experience in school. It was the easiest damned thing I ever did. And as for Mr Arkin, I don't know about being a mercenary, but the fact is a mercenary does his deed for money. I can assure you that electricians are making much more in Iraq than infantry Soldiers. Does that make electricians mercenaries? Mr Arkin, you are the mercenary. You trade the value of your word for money. Truly, Sir, that makes you despicable.

Truth is, they would be better off in school. We all know that, and even many of them know that too. They have chosen to spend some life serving and putting some of their blood and guts to the stone and to contribute a bit to that which has been sustained since the beginning by the blood, guts and lives of those willing to sacrifice. His undoing, like that of Mr Arkin and the likes of him is in how he believes that he somehow has a view that exceeds theirs. His view somehow enables him to use the fact that they have sacrificed schooling as a twist that he spun into an insult about their value. It does so satisfy me when the anti-crowd is revealed in their own word. Dissecting them can be one of the most satisfying endeavors I have known.

The public much did exactly that with Mr Arkin's rant opposing our Troops and their vesting in that which they have staked their lives. William Arkin did not let his words stand. He came back in and wrote more of the same but with pale apologies and softenings. He did not even have the courage to let people just simply hate his sentiments and cognitive deficiency. He explained and hemmed and hawed back and forth this way and that in practically a serial form of unrelenting efforts to explain himself and expound on his original reasonings.

Ultimately I wound up reading a coward and could not finish reading the rest of his table top banging about how and why he was right and further agitations about what he really meant. If he had to tell us what he "really" meant then he should not have written the article for public scrutiny. A third grader could read his chicken scratchings and even comprehend that he actually despises the military.

That leads me to wonder why he thinks his point of view is any more than just that. A point of view. I have read Hundreds od discertations from Soldiers as well as Marines in the field in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and some from a US Marine who actually knows Mahmoud Amahdinejad of Iran, and I can say with absolute certainty that without a shadow of doubt any American that thinks they are safe in this world without absolute and decisive action on the field in battle by us is a fool.

Now I will grant anyone that my statement above is an opinion. It is one in which I would stake my life, but it is an opinion. That brings me back to where it has come time for the peaceful Americans who love, life, apple pie, Fords and Chevrolets, Dodges and Hondas, Harleys and days at the beach tom stand together in a united scene and stand stoicly against those who think to harm, hate, murder and kill-ANYONE anywhere.

It must also be said that no American anywhere who is credible wants to do any harm unto anyone. I spent years in the military. No one "wanted" to do any harm. Our base philosophy was to be so well trained, so efficient and so capable that no one would think to challenge us. The tables have turned now. There is an enemy out there that does indeed think to challenge us. We must rise to and break that challenge. If we do not there will be an eternal price to be paid.

When I was stationed in Germany I was an observer to a German work crew who installed for crossing a river a mobile bridge. They worked so swiftly and with such pride and efficiency I have never forgotten it. I stood there with other US Military leaders and standing next to me was a German National. I acknowledged him and in my broken German congratulated his country through my acknowledgement of him for such a great crew and how well they trained. To my great advantage he spoke English as well as I did. His name was Hans. Hans and I stood there talking and in the course of that conversation I thanked him and his native Germany for hosting us, The American presence there, and Hans looked squarely at me with perhaps the most intense glance I have ever witnessed and he said to me words I have never forgotten.

"It is I who must thank you for coming here and affording us the influence of your presence. In America communism is but a philosophical doctrine. It is discussed and studied and it is academic cannon fodder. For us, here, in Germany, communism is in our very backyards and it is very real and it is a physical tangible threat. No, Sergeant, it is I who must thank you. "

I have never forgotten those words. For silly little brains with the actual information of teaspoons of content it can be said that stepping up to the plate is silly and fear driven. For me, the act of stepping up to the plate is courage and vision. It is looking at what is and seeing it for what it looks like, calling it that and then deciding upon and taking a decisive course of action.

Academics and muddle minds can question things all they like. That is a sign of the health of our free speech, but the truth is, free speech is earned on a battlefield and it comes not from peace but from brazen acts of heroism and self less acts of vision. We are in such a time right now, the world is threatened and there are plenty of things occurring that need to be addressed. That which our Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors are addressing is one of the many things which must be addressed and dealt with. To discount their investment in this state of world affairs is selfish and elitist and I can say nothing if I cannot say this, an elitist is merely a being who is about to fall if his elitism costs him the accurate vision of those over which he thinks he sees.