MILITARY
SERVICE PERSONNEL…..SURROGATE FOR INDUSTRY AND WANNABES!
(Al
Jazeera, Georg-Andreas Pogany, Soldier Advocate)
(Dr.
Ivan Covas, Robert Alvarez, Sylvia Dominguez, The Gazette)
(Dave
Philipps, Michael Ciagio, Jerrald Jensen, Tom Brown, Luke Adams)
(Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Sean Cockerham, McClatchy, Frazer Chronicle)
As
I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, “I listened to the president’s speech,” and
came away with opinions based on what he said and his track record over the first 460 days of living in the White
House as guests of the American taxpayer. Please…..PLEASE don’t get me wrong, I
wouldn’t want his job, and know that he spends many 14 and 16 hour days on the
job, and more sleepless nights that would be healthy for a human being.
But
near the end of his address to us he talked about Sergeant Cory Remsburg, and his 10 tours of duty in Afghanistan. And it got
me to thinking as I got a tissue for my wife who was aghast to learn that
somebody would risk himself to 10 tours of duty in Afghanistan. This is not to
say that I wasn’t surprised to learn that somebody would open themselves up to
the rigors and dangers of serving so many combat tours…..and was a bit
surprised that the military would allow it.
Remsburg
served with an elite Ranger Regiment whose tours of duty in combat zones were
restricted to about one 100
days in the field. That still adds
up to right around 3 years of combat, where you’re shooting at people, and
being shot at. The law of averages simply ran out on Sgt. Remsburg and he’s
lucky to be alive…..or is he?
For
all intents and purposes Cory Remsburg’s
life is over, he’ll never be normal again, he’ll always have a physical
defect to deal with…..and in time, the attention and adulation will die down,
and Mr. Remsburg will be left to his own devices, his own struggles, and the
realization that he volunteered his life for his country.
Remsburg
was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1983 and moved to St. Louis Missouri where he
lived with his father and step mother. Remsburg participated in his high school
marching band, orchestra, and jazz band. He also belonged to the German Club
and played on the varsity volley ball team as well as being highly active in
the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary Civil Patrol program.
It
was during the latter part of high school that Cory became interested in the
Army Rangers, joining the United States Army from his hometown of St. Louis,
Missouri in 2001. Remsburg attended One Station Unit Training Basic Airborne
Course and the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program at Fort Benning, Georgia
and was assigned to 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment,
Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, Georgia where he served since 2002.
It
was on his 10th rotation (tour of combat deployment) in both Iraq
and Afghanistan when he and his squad were conducting a combat operation
involving multiple enemy contacts on October 1, 2009 when he was gravely
injured by an impoverished explosive device, an IED from which he has been recovering ever since.
What
we say at the end of President Obama’s state of the nation speech on January 28th
is probably about as good as this young man will ever get. His care and his
well-being have now become a nation’s problem…..as it should be. When a U.S.
soldier either is killed, physically or mentally damaged, it indeed becomes a
civilian problem, we are the tax payers, and we’ll be footing Sgt. Remsburg
bills for the rest of his days.
FEW
REALIZE IT…..BUT WAR IS FOREVER
It
can take some time, but eventually every man or women that is in the military,
any branch, and no matter which country one’s affiliation might lay, when
people shot weapons at one another, or when bombs are exploded, inevitably
somebody is gonna get hit, killed, and blown apart…..it’s simply the nature of
the beast.
The
results of war is what is supposed to keep us from waging it, when are we ever
going to learn that diplomacy, although much more tedious, is one hell of a lot
better than scraping our people’s innards off the streets of some city that we
can’t even pronounce let along spell. Collecting dog tags and writing letters
to grieving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives is all that war accomplishes.
I’ve
said it before, and I’ll say it again, “conscription now, conscription
tomorrow, and conscription forever,” without a doubt a draft is the best
deterrent to war. Do you really think that SSG. Cory Remsburg understood the
complexities of what he was getting into when he signed on the dotted line back
in 2001, (hell no he didn’t,) and that’s part of the problem, recruiters lie
their butts off to cover their quotas (they
have them you know, quotas).
However
Cory Remsburg went from being a victim the same time he volunteered for his 3rd
tour of duty in a combat zone. His fate was sealed when he agreed to serve
another 100 day tour, why you ask, because after his two tours, when he was
able to walk, talk and eat without assistance, he’d used up about all of his luck,
his nine lives. He’d fought the good fight…..and needed to get
the hell out! But he didn’t, and he’ll pay the price for
the rest of his life, and so will we.
Hell
he might as well have smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and drank a 5th
of booze, at least he’d of had a better time, and the life-style probably would
have killed him, but ah-ha, we’d have been left off the taxpayers hook…..they
still have Potters grave-yards all over the country…..where they’ll bury you at
local taxpayers’ expense.
Do not get me wrong, I
have all the respect in the world for SSG. Cory Remsburg and I respect the hell
out of his decisions with regards to serving his country in the Army Rangers. However
that is where my respect stops, anybody who volunteers 10 times to go
into combat zones, and spend in excess of 3 years dodging bullets and bombs
needs his head examined, because clearly he wasn’t operating with all of his
oars in the water.
LET
ME EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHERE I’M
COMING FROM
It’s
kind of funny how some people follow the United States government, and their
decisions with a blind faith that is usually reserved for adolescence, or
younger impressionable late teenagers. I think that these young men and some
young women listen with their heart, and not their brains, you know, that lump
about three feet above your ass.
Recruiting
methods and materials are geared towards the younger adults, and proclaim all
sorts of grandiose rewards for joining up. From those snappy uniforms, to
traveling throughout the world, most recruiters remind me of car salesmen, and
sell, sell, sell.
Again,
as I’ve said in the past, I understand that we need a standing military force, if for nothing else than natural
disasters. Guarding the president, or the pageantry that’s connected with
visiting dignitaries, to patrolling borders, there is a need for a small
military force.
LET’S
GET RIGHT DOWN TO IT
Numbers of military
personnel:
(Active
duty)
Army, 541,291
Air
Force, 333,772
Navy, 317,237
Marines, 195,238
Coast
Guard, 42,357
Over
1.4 million active military personnel waiting for the call to front lines, so that they can use the
military skills that they were taught, and spent months training for. These
young men and women are like an itchy finger on the trigger of a weapon…..in
fact exactly like the finger on the trigger of a gun.
The
break-down for the male to female active count is 210,485 active women
soldiers, and 1,219,511 active male counterparts. The reserve count, (American
civilians that can be called to active service if needed,) stands at 850,880.
Today in the United States, if there was an all-out war declared on anybody, we
can rest assured in our defense, that there would be 2,280,876 able bodied
fighting forces to protect our way of
life.
Having
a powerful military has always proven to be the key for the development of any
nation, from the middle ages on, nations have spent considerable amounts of
money in maintaining and developing an active army. Investing in a country’s
military helps to keep order, researching advanced equipment that are
beneficial to the armed forces as well as a nation, and usually gives low
paying employment to a pretty large segment of the country.
Today
in most developed countries, civilian taxes support their military
organizations entirely, in a kind of tit for tat (you scratch my back and I’ll
scratch yours) way. However the back scratching has escalated here in the
United States more than anywhere else in the world…..in the history of the
world.
Beginning
with India, $112 billion, The Peoples Republic of China, $106.4 billion,
Russia, $71.2 billion, United Kingdom, $62.7, Japan, $58.9 billion, Saudi Arabia,
$48.1 billion, France, $44.7 billion, Germany, $31.5 and Brazil, $28.7 billion,
these nations’ military spending follows the United States, who spends a total of $664.8 billion.
The
U.S. has, in addition to active and reserve forces that number 2,280,876, more
than 600,000 in their intelligence community with a budget that’ll approach
$1.7 billion. I guess you could say that the United States intelligence and
military forces is a booming industry,
with no sign of a slow-down. And by the way, the additional $1.7 billion that
the U.S. spends on intelligence is more than the entire defense budget of any
country on the face of the planet.
So
when I say that our military personnel are acting like surrogates for industry and wannabe’s I’m not badmouthing the military, rather I’m singling for a wake-up
call to these brave young men and women. The battle that you’re engaged on a
daily bases is not protecting
the United States, rather the wallets of industrials and those politicians that
are engaged in profiteering.
It’s
not almost criminal, how
these people bamboozle some
of our young people, it is criminal,
and these people need to be tracked down, brought up on charges, tried,
convicted…..in put in jail, now, wouldn’t that be a fitting end to these scum,
us taxpayers supporting their time in jail.
HAVE
A NICE DAY!
No comments:
Post a Comment