What Honor Commands
The other day a friend of mine who works in law enforcement told me he’d be deploying soon to Iraq, working for a private security company contracted to protect government officials there. Like others I know who’ve gone, he couldn’t quite explain, at least so that I could maybe understand, why he’d made that choice. It’s an assignment so scary, the military won’t even assign its own people to the job.
But the money, my friend said, was definitely a factor. The guys working for Blackwater and the other mercenary groups are very well paid. That’s an argument it’s hard to argue with, just as it is for new recruits to the Iraqi army. Those guys don’t want to be soldiers and targets. But in a country with no economy or future, it’s the only way they can figure out how to feed their families. And so a lot of them are getting killed trying to do that.
Our view is we’re glad elections are over… or mostly over. It’s been a bruising and brutally partisan spectacle, encapsulated by the singularly disturbing images of former POW John McCain stumping, as it were, against fellow veteran and senate candidate Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who lost her legs in Iraq.
There are, we believe, still circumstances where at the very least, honor commands the respect of silence. No one knows that better than McCain.
Veterans Day, which we celebrate November 11, is one such time. We hope people will really take time to think about the sacrifices so many have made, in defense of our freedoms and the constitution which has kept them real and meaningful for over eleven generations. Patriotism isn’t an abstract ideal or a symbol on someone’s lapel. It’s a measure of our honor and respect for what makes our country what it is, and the actions we’re willing to take to protect those things.
BP