Kill People and Break Things

Of all the topics to choose from this week to write on, this is the one I don’t want to do… 

      I got up this morning had my coffee and wrote the first line then I stopped.  I’ve cleaned the garage, burnt the brush pile and took care of the animals.  Anything but this.  

    Today a young man returns to the United States, a soldier, a husband, a father of two.  I could easily be describing myself not so many years back or anyone of tens of thousands of other young men and women that have been sent to foreign lands by our nation.  But the return of this soldier is different, this soldier returns under a black cloud of shame.  The cloud of shame blankets the troops still in the Afghan region, it shadows our entire nation.  This soldier stands accused of killing 16 men, women and children.  An act of pure evil.  A phrase had been coined that the military is only good for “Killing people and breaking things”, I’ve used it and coming from an Air Force bomb squadron you would think when called upon I would be accepting of the phrase but it’s a byproduct of the true mission of the military.  Some years prior to being assigned to the 9^th Bomb Squadron I was assigned to the Med-Evac C-9A aircraft flying out of Scott AFB IL.  As a flight mechanic I flew 1,997 sorties transporting patients of every sort, accident victims, burn patients, even premature babies.  Ever so often I would see a patch on one of the medical crewmembers with an angel holding a globe and scrolled across the bottom the phrase “THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE”.  This phrase stayed with me the rest of my military career, sometimes to live up to the idea it meant seeking out evil and killing it, or destroying the capabilities of others to inflict harm.  All in the goal of achieving the true mission of the United States military, defending the defenseless, bring aid and comfort to the hopeless and freedom to the oppressed.

    There are groups in the world that will use the actions of one disturbed individual to paint our entire nation as evil but we need to pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and start building trust again.  Every solder in the field, every U.S. citizen in foreign lands is an un-official ambassador of our nation, mind your manners and watch out for each other.  You may be the only American a person of another nation may meet, leave them with a good impression.  Start the long, hard healing process that lay ahead of us.  Show that we are a just and good people, a shining light of freedom.  To the men and women of our military I am not “Generally” proud of you, I’m VERY PROUD of YOU!  I’m proud to have been among the ranks of the enlisted force.  You will be facing some hard times in the coming months but I’ve got full faith you will come through as a better force.  

    I can not judge the guilt or innocence of the accused sergeant but if he is guilty I hope he stands tall, admits his crimes and accepts the consequences to allow the healing to begin.

Till Next Week

The TOMCAT 

                                 

                                     I wish I could have found a better picture