What It’s All About
I spent nearly 30 years of my life with the US Government. We were basically using intelligence to chase bad guys. Not just Communists, but terrorists, human smugglers, gun runners, pirates, dope shippers, and all kinds of criminals outside the country who were trying to do harm to our nation. They were also trying to do harm to other nations as well — NATO countries, Asian Countries, even some of our less fortunate Communist neighbors. When I say bad people, I’m talking about the kind of people who will chain-saw you up alive, dissolve you in a tub of acid, and dump you in a sewer, that kind of bad people. They operate or attempt to, in places where the governments aren’t strong or are just being birthed, where people are trying to learn to rule themselves, whether or not it is a socialist, democratic, republic or rule by monarchy. Most of these governments have growing problems which aren’t pretty. They include graft, lying, cheating, bribery, kidnapping, rape, stealing, murder, and all the other petty and not so petty crimes that go along with the kinds of change that take place when a country goes from bad to good.
It’s a learning process and bringing in the “law” and making it work, that is “enforcing it,” is a tough job. It’s messy and a nasty business. Not something most people volunteer for. Mistakes are made frequently, and good things frequently happen as well. But eventually good wins out and peace is made and things settle down and a new nation is born, and everyone eventually forgets how things were in the “good old days” of the nation’s birth. And so it was with our Nation, and so it is with many others. In a lot of cases, in fact, in many, they don’t even want help while they are going through that process — it interferes with the guys who are in power and early on that means they can’t skim as much off the top. So, sometimes you have to help them anyway you can.
What I find ironic, is that so many people go to so such extremes to gouge out the scabs and sores which are barely healed from the birth of their own great nation’s beginnings, and want so dearly to pick at them, even before they have allowed the concrete in their great countries foundation to solidify. They want to lay blame everywhere except where it truly belongs. For it is far more important to build their own “great history” in the beginning at the expense of other nations, than it is to accept fault for their own failings.
I spent a lot of time in the service of my country overseas in many places in the world helping to Nation-build. In many of those places today, people can walk on a sunny day without fear, and speak their minds freely and openly without recourse. A lot of good Americans died so they can do that. I now sit quietly and listen to some of these people in the exercising of their freedom of speech say a lot of nasty things about America and Americans that simply isn’t true. But they are nation-building. Right on! They are creating a history they can be proud of, albeit by perhaps forgetting what part America played in their freedom by relegating America to a darker role in it. That’s okay.
What it does point out to me, however, is the fact that I did spend all those years doing that for a lot of other people in the world, and now I sit here, retired, in my own home in Virginia, watching my own freedoms being threatened. Freedoms I risked my life to provide to those people in other lands. I now have to ask myself, if I will calmly sit here in my home and give up those very freedoms I fought so hard for, for others, and calmly let go of them without so much as a word or a whimper. I don’t think so. I think it’s time for Americans to begin to worry about and protect their rights under the Constitution. It is time to begin to think about fighting to retain those rights, even if it means fighting al-Qaida or others on our own streets. It’s time to insure whoever you are voting for in the coming election is someone you can trust to protect those rights, as guaranteed by the Constitution. If you aren’t sure, ask them outright. Make them give you an answer, or don’t vote for them. I fought overseas and was willing to die for those rights for others. So I sure as hell am not going to give them up here in my own country without a fight.
JM
