Yeah, that.
You know, the USMC/USN core values: The part that comes after “Honor, Courage…COMMITMENT” Remember them?
Sometimes, when you you are young, folks tell you, “Honor your Commitments.”
When you are older you realize that sometimes you need to, “courage honor your commitments.”
Particularly when your commitments, those things which you said you were going to do or were going to support get hard, difficult, or unpopular.
Or perhaps those commitments get to a point where you can achieve personal gain by abandoning them. What to do, what to do…
Such a dilemma.
Well, actually it is not a dilemma. I don’t have a problem with commitments. When I agree to do something, by God I am going to get it done.
I will put everything I have into completing the task. Once all the debate/compromise/collaboration is done, it is time to get down and dirty and get the job done. You put your best assets in and go do it. If it gets hard, guess what: you still have to do it. You made a COMMITMENT.
If you have the opportunity for debate, you use it. If you are not going to debate because it might hurt you, then don’t’ complain later. Have some principles. Take a stand.
Have some respect for those you sent in harm’s way. Those who have given their lives for your decision to send them there. Those who believe that their leaders have the country’s best interests at heart and who believe that their elected leaders would not send them on a fool’s errand. Those who believe that when the President said and the Congress said it was time to go, they went. And they will go until the job is done. Done right.
If someone is not getting the job done, the guy in charge needs to fire them and get someone who can get it done. Lincoln did. The American fighting man’s life should not become a political football to be kicked around and thrown away.
DO NOT renege on your commitments to the men and women you sent to do God’s work in the badlands.
We need…we MUST be ONE AMERICA.
Those who oppose us…WANT A DIVIDED AMERICA.
All for one, one for all…
Bull Sir,
Feeling your pain tonight, thinking back to #1′s first deployment,the beginning of the war,the weeks,months,every night watching for the report from the CNN embed with my son’s battalion scotch one or two?, don’t recall yet, there was the support from the majority of Americans that got me and my family through that deployment and the second and the third. Now having been flogged over and over by the MSM and those Respectable men and women on the hill(sic)for the past months, you have to wonder what must be going through
the heads of the parents,wives,and husbands who are getting ready to see their loved ones off for the first time? I see things from the
800 yd and beyond range due to my past service. I truly feel sorry for what must be going through some of these poor civilian’s collective minds because they actually believe what they hear on the nightly news.
I believe we are doing what is right for this country, I stand by the CIC.(though still pray’n for some ROE with real teeth) That’s my commitment.
So it is that at least you and I know the price we as a nation will pay later is far too high to fail now. I know the constant drone from the 5th column does make ya weary from time to time so….CHEERS!
“CLINK”
Richard
Agree 100% Bullnav, but that’s why I believe we ultimately won’t be succesful. The state of leadership in America is such that commitment to party is greater than commitment to country.
And it goes both ways. The democrats trash a war… the republicans trashed a president. Both times it was for the good of the opposition party… not for the country.
I don’t like politicians or those who are leading the country (and I’m talking about the administration, senate, and house). Yes, there are individuals who shine… but, they are few and far between. Most are in it for themselves… career politicians who belong to the “new royal elite” of America. There in Rome sits the senate and the emperor… sniveling and debating while the legions face the barbarians at the Empire’s outer realm. All the while, Rome’s citizens sit around and feast and watch circuses. What’s next? Mercenary armies and legions comprised of non-Romans… oh wait, we’re already going in that direction too.
At best, in the end, I believe the War on Terror will be a stalemate… a sort of unspoken agreement as in the 80′s where we will tolerate the occasional terror attack and retaliate in kind.
Perhaps another attack… one which yields tens of thousands of American casualties will change all that, but other than that, America’s population really goes with the wind. 98% of them have no personal stake in this. They don’t wear a uniform or have a family member who does. “America is at the mall”, so to speak. Only one to two percent of the population really shoulder the burden. And, as much as the far right thinks this is okay (because why should a 22-year old graduate of some Ivy-league school go serve in Iraq when he has an easy job making $80,000 at his daddy’s company), it is a recipe for failure.
As long as this remains the reality and we have an administration that quietly encourages that attitude, we will not win. Granted, we may not lose… but we will not win.
Solutions? Execute the reporters and lawyers and suspend the Bill of Rights.
Realistic? No. I debate in my mind whether a progressive, Western society with its laws and moral righteousness can defeat a “no-holds barred” Eastern enemy who is willing to sacrifice himself for the cause and who thinks in terms of decades or centuries instead of 30-second soundbytes.
We have two sides in America… those who believe the war (for whatever reason) is a mistake and won’t serve and those who cheer the war on but won’t make any personal sacrifice themselves to fight in it. In between is that 1% I refer to… the active-duty and reserve military and their families. And their opinions are varied… but the difference is they serve regardless of how they personally feel.
A united country we are not.
On other things, have you read “Scorpion Down” by Ed Offley yet?
Why does it have to be such an all or nothing proposition? Sometimes, things don’t work out the way you hoped. That’s life. I liken the current political situation to a marriage that has gone sour. You try to stick it out, but the other partner just continues to dissapoint you and make you miserable-taking your money and your spirit with them in the process. Eventually you hit the point that for your own well-being you have to leave. Staying for the sake of staying is wasting your life. And life its too short to do that.
Now I do agree with the point that not enough Americans serve. However we bring that on ourselves. We fill ourselves with self serving PAP about the need for an all volunteer force, then we cut the size of that force and make other compromises to keep it manned. Those who don’t want to can opt out-its legal so they take advantage of it. Until the nation gets a concept of national service-as a ticket to other privledges it will never change.
Finally the Iraqis have to bear some of the blame here. They have had years and years to get their stuff together and they are still mired in their bullshit religion. I wish them the joy that jerk mohammed as long as it lasts…………..
With regard to the MSM reporting in Iraq.
What we are seeing is a clash between old established technology and new internet technology.
Old meaning via eyewitness to reporter to editor to print then to dissemination for public consuption.
New meaning via eyewitness straight to public consuption.
MSM is just protecting their territory and jobs. Because it’s kinda hard to make money on the news if you’re no longer part of the news distribution chain.
I’m not defending the “establishment” media, I’m just making a point about emerging technology affecting news dissemination.
Forgot to sign my post about the old MSM in Iraq. Thus so you know who to yell at if you disagree.
Oops.. my comments today were supposed to go in the following post about the Milblogger conference.
So, if we discover halfway through that the President in an incompetent blunderer, and that he and his cronies are waging the war in the most disastrous manner possible, then we can’t complain?
I’m not sure what American you think you live in, but the one I live in is a democracy. When leaders are incompetent, we either remove them or reduce the damage that they can cause. When policies fail utterly, we don’t stick blindly by them; we figure out a way to minimize the damage, then change course. Sometimes, the job doesn’t get done because the job, fundamentally, is undoable. It behooves us to actually figure that out before we make the disaster worse.
Not to overgeneralize, but sentiment of this sort has more place in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or Communist China than it does in the United States. You cannot purport to defend democracy while at the same time denying all of the substance of democracy. When I first found this blog, I asserted that it was just about as close to “American fascism” as I could imagine. Some of the posters have made me rethink that assessment. This post does nothing but confirm it.
I’ll be as frank as I can, Bull Nav. This post displays a hatred for America, and everything that it stands for. You should be ashamed. I hope that you figure that out someday.
Rob, I think you miss the point a bit. We’re not questioning the system that allows for the replacement of a leader or the changing of policy.
What I think Bull-Nav was getting at was that wars can take time to win. You cannot toss in the towel at half-time just because the score is 28-0 with your team on the losing side.
There also is the reality of the modern media, Rob. They portray a situation as they want their target audience to see it. While many chastise Fox News for being sympathetic to the right (which they are), they fail to realize that they get the same treatment from CNN and the networks and their sympathies to the left.
With the American people not getting the full spectrum of what is occuring in Iraq (or what the consequences of defeat are), they react more in an emotional (rather than a logical) manner.
My argument is that the American population and western society today is incapable of defeating an eastern enemy. The American people do not have the stomach for protracted conflict. They want theirs and they want it now.
An eastern enemy can wait a thousand years for victory. They will readily sacrifice themselves individually with a belief in a higher cause. They will slaughter innocents without a second thought. Yet, these are men with families. They are not animals or psychopaths.
So, we are not Nazis, Rob nor fascists. Quite the opposite (trust me). We merely lament the weak and fickle nature of American society.
Rob says: “Not to overgeneralize, …”
Then later says: “This post displays a hatred for America, and everything that it stands for.”
ET TU, Rob?
OK, Rob, am I a facist because you think I demand conformity or because I disagree with your opinion?
If the latter, well I can’t help you there: that is a personal problem.
If the former, believe me, I do not want a bunch of mindless automatons blindly following anything the elected leadership says we must do. For our form of government to survive, we must have debate.
Again, if you choose to not have the debate (as I believe we should have had in October 2002), and you decide on a course of action, I believe you need to stand by your decision and not let the political winds make it for you.
Skippy likened the situation in Iraq to a marriage, and after thinking about it for a day or so I think it is a good one. However, I still think there is still room for effort to be put into this one in an attempt to save it. I do not believe we have exhausted all the available options, and that we owe it to ourselves and the Iraqi people to get their country into a stable position.
Do they bear some burden to run their own country? Hell yes. Most of it, in fact. Certainly the other Arab countries around them could help, but that is not their way.
Are we going to get to a point where it is no longer in our interest to stay? I don’t know yet. I am still pondering that one. We still have forces stationed in a bunch of places around the world from various events over the last 60 years or so. Should we keep all those troops there? Why Japan and not Iraq? Why Germany and not Iraq? Why not some of the problem areas in Africa and not Iraq?
No, I prefer debate.
I also demand principles.
Bull-Nav, have you read “Scorpion Down” yet?
Joel – no. Just saw it today and added it to my list.
Check your email: sent you a note…
Rob, I’ve enjoyed getting a different perspective from your blog from time to time, but you’ve completely missed the mark on this one. Mistakes and blunders have been made, and those should be corrected as best we are able, but we should not abandon this struggle so easily. My esteemed co-blogger is saying that there is a time for debate and a time for resolve. While I think there is still plenty of need for debate, we are debating the wrong things. Congress bears a share of the responsibility for committing us to this struggle, and some of us think that the debate should be about how they can best assist us in accomplishing that mission they gave us. But that’s just how us “fascists” think, when we are given a task we want to make sure it gets done right.
>DO NOT renege on your commitments to the men and women you sent to do God’s work in the badlands.
Who’s work?