OK, OK, I know that I have been loquacious lately. I can’t really tell you why, I simply have a lot to comment on.
I have a quote that I would like to share, and that I hope you all will think about. It is from one of my favorite authors, a man that took the time to send me a hand written reply to a letter that I wrote to him about one of the books that he wrote.
“And I am going to do more stories besides this one in the series, because Hammer’s Slammers have become a vehicle for a message that I think needs to be more widely known. Veterans who’ve written or talked to me already understand, but a lot of other people don’t.
When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do.
And if the implications of that bother you, the time to do something about it is before you decide to send him out.â€
David Drake
Most military people, hell, most people in general, when under fire, will develop a policy of survival. “I will do whatever I can to stay alive.†Don’t automatically shake your head, THINK about this one.
Everything that we do is rooted to this one instinct. We eat to survive; we work to make money to get survival necessities; we don’t choke people we hate because we don’t want to go to jail or be killed; we take care of our children so that we, in some small way, can survive.
So, when you put a 20 year old in a situation with a gun and you tell him that there are rules that cover this and rules that cover that, and then he starts taking enemy fire, do you honestly believe that he (or she, for that matter) is going to stop and think about the rules and possible consequences? Hell, no! He or she is going to return fire. And, no matter how you want to color it, that is exactly the right answer, on every level. This is a personal decision based on a gut reaction that, as soon as the embedded reporters broadcast it around the world, becomes American policy.
I have noticed, in my watching of world happenings, a number of things that I must comment on. Once upon a time in Beirut, there was a company of Marines. Now this company was doing everything it could to stay alive in a combat zone, in spite of it’s commander. You see, this particular commander had decided that there was no need to issue his Marines ammunition to go with their nice, shiny rifles, because, they were Americans, and nothing happens to Americans. Does anyone else remember the ending of this story? The car bomb? The dead? I wonder if the Marines had ammo, would anyone have tried them.
To the people that want peace at any cost, I say that there was a President that most of you admire and wish was President still, and even he was smart enough to know the truth.
“It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.â€
John F. Kennedy
He understood the implications, why can’t anybody understand them now?
Carlo
