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Discussion Membership
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Independence Day e-mailFrom BlackFive.net via WindsOfChange.net: COL. SIMCOCK: I'll tell you what, the one thing that all Marines want to know about -- and that includes me and everyone within Regimental Combat Team 6 -- we want to know that the American public are behind us. We believe that the actions that we're taking over here are very, very important to America. We're fighting a group of people that, if they could, would take away the freedoms that America enjoys.
We stand behind the troops and apologize for those who would bring them home before the job is done. Some don't want the troops to get hurt. Others feel, when our troops stepped into the vacuum left by the United Nations, Americans wanted to impose their values on those countries. Historically, America has forced no country vanquished in world wars to adopt our culture. We do encourage practices one could learn from one's own history. In truth, the world forged America; America hasn't forged the world. Independence Day reminds us that, humbled by what had not worked and unsure of what would be best, our forefathers built doubt and respect for everyone into our processes: Terrorist incidents should redouble our resolve at home to encourage society to work together to oppose them. We help moderate Muslims not out of altruism, but because we oppose thugs for our combined safety. While troops challenge terrorists, the rest of us at home are charged to challenge the ideas of those who would abet them. Our actions should help shame to its senses a United Nations that has long forgotten its fifty-year-old Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The message needs to be honed until it becomes blindingly obvious that processes of peaceful change toward justice offer more than the uncertainty of war. Larger than a conflict between cultures, Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a multi-front war challenging the fabric of society that guides interaction between cultures. If we persevere, the first decade of the 21st century may become known for the wisdom that ought to have been obvious long ago. Consider the space between our troops' clear sense of purpose and the fallback some advocate. Perhaps for the latter, freedom has turned into an abstract concept. Perhaps, for them, the mechanics of maintaining freedom fall to someone else. If so, this may be why: The ?greatest generation? that returned from World War II tried to insulate their families from their own dreadful experience. They returned to classrooms under the G.I. Bill, factory floors, and pre-computerized desk jobs. They sheltered their families in suburbia, complete with swing sets, two cars in the garage, and Howdy Doody, Ozzie and Harriet, and Douglas Edwards with the News on TV. In the decades following WWII, their children practiced under-the-school-desk duck-and-cover drills they never had to use against real nuclear bombs or invading troops. In the 1970s those protected children became the next generation's teachers and reporters. Despite the war in Vietnam, continuous peace at home, surging technological innovation, and the stable, advancing economy put more distance between the unpleasant, necessary work troops do and school lessons or televised film at 11:00. By the 1990s, three generations distant from Granddad's war, peace had become an abstract platitude. They marched for peace, mistaking the absence of war for peace, when peace is really the absence of the need for war. Insulated, it is possible to overlook those who try to dominate or kill. If this is the case, the last good deed for war-generation grandparents may perform might be to remind the current generation -- except for our savvy troops -- of responsibilities to society we all share.
On Independence Day, send your e-mail of support to: [Macro error: Can't find a sub-table named "commentIt".]
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