Warriors also acknowledge personal betterment as an incentive to serve. One naval officer describes the personal fulfillment that his service has given him: “There’s nothing better than knowing that you have served your country and answered your calling.”
Another Marine attests to the sensation of a calling: “I felt it was my duty to do something. Because I can, I need to. Because there are so many who can’t and want to …” As one airman describes it, his calling comes from a sense of duty: “It was just something that you needed to do, and you did it because it was expected.”
All of the warriors interviewed communicate their belief that, at its core, the mission of their calling is to defend America and freedom, both here and abroad.
The calling to spread freedom and champion democracy did not originate with President Bush, or even with our Founding Fathers. The mission of democracy is much older than that, as Warriors reminds us through its selection of the famed funeral oration given by Pericles in commemoration of fallen Athenian soldiers for its foreword:
“Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.”
Everything that is at stake now -- in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the threats posed by Iran and North Korea, in the insolence demonstrated by Russia in its invasion of Georgia -- is the same “everything” that has always been at stake for as long as men have made war. Our Declaration of Independence cites freedom as an unalienable right, not just for Americans but for all human beings. Our way of life, our very right to exist, is the “everything” for which our service men and women are willing to give so much of themselves. They fight to defend America’s freedoms, and they fight to grant the gift of freedom worldwide.
You can order Warriors, the book and the DVD, at the LOOC Foundation’s Web site. All the proceeds benefit Freedom Is Not Free, a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to aiding wounded troops, their families, and the families of the fatally wounded.