Bluehawk:
Glad to be aboard. Always an honor to be in the company of those who've served.
I've often felt that there must be a special heaven for those who've selflessly dedicated their lives to the military service of this or, indeed any country. There you find people of conscience and of duty who, even though they might personally disagree with a particular politic of the moment, march off to do the job they swore to do.
The line that has always touched me most in my enlistment oaths (seemed to me they were like booster shots every 4 years) was "to protect and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic." In this one phrase, we commit ourselves to the fight that our nation has decided to fight. We surrender our will to the greater Will of the nation and, while we personally might think that there might be another way, we follow our legal orders as best we can. Sometimes the Will of the nation changes, as it did in Vietnam, and we come home to train and become better prepared to fight the good fight another day. But until it does, we do our duty and take that "spoonful of sugar" to help the medicine go down.
I was in Libya, Vietnam, Turkey and Germany during my 20 years. And during my 20 years, there was no time when there wasn't a war SOMEPLACE on the planet. Historians can tell us that there has been a war someplace on the planet for virtually all of its existence. Even for a peace-loving nation whose military trains defensively for eventual offensive action, sooner or later, the odds are we too will be involved.
Jake
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