I got the following email yesterday from a friend of mine, a man who graduated college this spring and was commissioned an officer in the Marine Corps the next day.
Dear Dean:
I just made it back from England on Thursday, right before the last two days' events.
This is some serious stuff. I remember when I was down at Quantico two summers ago for the first half of OCS. The second to last day I was down there--"Family Day," incidentally--was the 7/7 bombings. The staff pulled us over and told us the news and then said that's basically why they're so hard on us down there: we're at war and will be for a long time, and the mothers of recruits at MCRD and at Parris Island right now are going to be depending on us one day to get their sons and daughters home alive.
When I was at Cambridge last week, I talked to an officer in the Royal Navy who had just received his Ph.D. He was saying he thought the larger war would last 20-30 years; I've always thought a generation---mine in particular. Our highest calling: To defend our way of life and Western Civilization; fight for the freedom of others; protect our friends, family, and country; and give hope to a people long without it.
As we near our nation's independence day, hopefully the talking heads in Washington and the citizenry at large will put their partisan bickering aside, realize that there is a very serious threat out there--an enemy that would love nothing more than to see us destroyed, and go out and get the job done and see to it that the war is won.
Semper fi.
On a related note, Michael Yon has a searing post on the people we’re fighting in Iraq. As is the case with everything Michael writes, it’s must-reading.
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