As you enjoy your long weekend and hopefully take time to honor America’s fallen heros, past and present, remember that there is a war going on inside America that is just as real as the battles going on daily in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war at home is represented on one side by people who, now that we have deposed an evil dictator, want to second guess his legacy. This, despite his 30 years of murdering and brutally repressing his own population while committing aggressive acts against neighbors. Instead of supporting Americans who are putting their lives on the line to try and make Iraq a place where people can choose their own destinies, some people are doing everything they can to disparage and undermine every attempt to bring Iraqis a better quality of life, more choices and lives free from religious intolerance and extremist motivated violence.
Recently, three men in Baghdad, a Sunni mentor and two Shia students were murdered for wearing shorts. Meanwhile, the anti-war poltroons hold forth idiots like Jesse MacBeth so they can spout lies about massacres that never happened. Here is Jesse’s real “war” record. He never even finished basic training:
The bottom half of the form is just as revealing. Block 19 says “Service Member has not completed first full term of service“. Block 24, as noted earlier, shows his service as “Uncharacterized” which is only given to those who are discharged as trainees. Block 25 is key. It shows he was discharged under the authority of AR 635-200 Chapter 11. That means he was found to be unfit to remain in the Army and was dicharged for the good of the service. Or as many have said, a boot camp washout. We’ve been through the code for discharge in the next block, but the narrative reason for his discharge is found in block 28, which says “Entry level performance and conduct“, or, he couldn’t cut it.
Goodbye, Jesse MacBeth and good riddance. You’re a coward and a liar. You did a fine job of representing the anti-war movement.
In real war, when the fantasy world evaporates and you find people are really trying to end your existence, sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes, people lose their way and do bad things. Sometimes, atrocities take place. When Americans do commit war crimes, the truth almost always comes out. Perpatrators are investigated, facts are tabulated, trials are held, and the guilty are punished. We are not cruel, but we do not tolerate inhumane acts. The enemy we are fighting encourages them.
On the whole, Americans live by rules and moral codes that are better than those our enemies have to offer. If this were not true, I would not have become an American citizen. I would not have volunteered to serve, on two separate occasions more than a decade apart. And I would not be writing this blog entry telling you that I am proud of the character of the vast majority of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines with whom I have had the honor to serve. The military I serve in spits out people like Jesse MacBeth, and rightly so.
You have the right to think the war in Iraq is wrong. You have the right to protest against it. You have the right to vote for leaders who will tell America’s military to pack up and leave with the task we started only partially complete. You live in a nation that allows you vast freedom of thought and action in comparision to what most in Iraq or Afghanistan will ever experience. And you are only free because of the men and women I serve with, who continue to volunteer, time and again, to protect you from the same sort of people who would murder you for wearing shorts.
Go ahead and believe what you want. Jesse MacBeth is a courageous hero for speaking out against war. Saddam was a benevolent ruler who kept Iraq peaceful, prosperous and terrorist free. Iraq never harbored terrorists or supported them financially. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Islam is the religion of peace, and we should tolerate all Muslims, no matter how extreme their views may be and no matter how violently they express them. You my friend, are one day going to succeed at whatever you put your mind to, because you’re one sharp individual. Nothing gets by you and your razor intellect.
I, on the other hand, am just a simple soldier with no vision and a limited understanding of the problems facing us in the 21st century. As technology shrinks the world and forces diametrically opposed viewpoints to clash as never before, you protestors who don’t know exactly what it is you are protesting might eventually prevail. You better go watch the Jesse MacBeth video again. That guy knows what is really going on over here in the sandbox.