Reality Check 101

Americans have just passed through another Memorial Day weekend.  Hopefully, a majority of them took time to honor those who have have been willing to protect, serve and sacrifice for this great nation.  There is something uniquely life-changing, too many times traumatic, about that kind of patriotism, whether it is a first generation experience or one like my family which represents four generations of military service in the Army, Air Force and Navy beginning with World War I.

Until September 11th, 2001, for the most part, military service existed in a much clearer environment.  The enemy was always “over there’.  He represented an aggressor nation or alliance of nations whose purpose was political and geographical domination.  No matter which military branch members were in or what job they performed, in the back of their minds they knew they had a secure home waiting for them.

Second, even if their particular mission seemed mundane, they knew they had a government that had their backs and respected them.  In the midst of the challenges of military life, which only military people understand, they preserved for themselves the cultures and values they came from.  Cultural anchors and personal values are essential in the military, especially for the majority who will not make the military a career and will re-enter the “real world”.

9-11 forced a new kind of aggressor and a new kind of Islamic warrior into an already existing war on America’s southern border.  Terrorist combatants are no longer constrained by political structures or national boundaries.  Except for rare outliers, they are motivated by the greed and power of international drug and human trafficking cartels or the merciless ideology of radical Islam.

Men and women are still responding to the threats.  Initially, they accepted multiple and extended deployments overseas.  Believing that by taking the fight to terrorism they were securing the homeland, they were able to stay true to themselves while performing as the best in the world.  They gave ravished countries relief from oppression and the opportunity for self-governed freedom.  Too many gave their lives for those campaigns.

Since 2008 all of that has changed.  It began when surviving veterans and the families of those who died in the fight watched their commander-in-chief began to announce strategies and retreats ahead of time to the enemy.  Up to that point, they were supposed to be the good guys.  Gradually they found themselves serving a government that was in the process of apologizing to the world for their accomplishments and sacrifices, if not for their mere presence.  Now, as has happened so many times before, the soil that received so much of their blood and the people who grew to trust them are being re-trampled by once-defeated foes.

Active duty service members have added stress from the command structure as well.  Their values and personal cultures are under internal attack.  In some units, if they approach a chaplain for Christian counsel, the chaplain could face discipline for offering specifically Christian counseling.  Since the demise of mind-your-own-business (“don’t ask, don’t tell”), same-sex assaults and intimidations have skyrocketed.

And how does it look on the home front that they worked so hard to protect?  Here is a snapshot:

• On May 14th, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment to this year’s defense authorization (no thanks to Fred Upton) which would have allowed illegal immigrants to enlist, effectively taking those opportunities to serve away from natural and naturalized citizens.

• Also in May, the Office of Inspector General (OIC) for Homeland Security (DHS) revealed that DHS does not routinely perform background checks before Illegal immigrants before they are released and that there is no effective system in place to track them.

• Most alarming of all, while waging a war against terrorism, the U.S., in just three years time, imported more Middle Easterners than from Mexico and Central America combined (Center for Immigration Studies) while the FBI admitted that it could not screen them.  The UN is presently poised to resettle more than 10,000 Muslim refugees in American towns with little or no warning to local governments.

Such is the environment for active duty patriots.  Such is the present state of the Union for which brave Americans have bled and died.