On that day, I was an officer in training to serve an operation squadron in the US Navy. Amidst the tragedy, I felt very lucky that I was going to have a chance to do what so many would have done were they able - be ready to strike back. I never got the chance to truly strike back, and instead had to be satisfied with simply being there, being ready, being a leader, playing my part.
It was unimaginable in 2001 that it would result in me also being in the sand with a rifle, but five years later, with a new three month old child and the expectation at that point that I would be home for the first year of our third child's life, I got another call and within five days I was in training with the US Army. Again, I was lucky to have a chance to play a role, and paying a huge personal and financial price to do so. It felt like anything but luck at the time, but in hindsight - the balance of luck was incredibly positive, if not without cost.
I remember from the day how proud and humbled I was of all the folks who were running the wrong way. I don't know who coined the phrase, but I think I got it from a t-shirt on a bomb squad Sailor. "If you see me running, run the other way." In other words, that guy was "running the wrong way", towards danger. Towards danger, to do what he and likely only he could do; risk life and limb to prevent the death and destruction of the bomb.
I saw a lot of folks "running the wrong way" in my naval and police careers - I did it myself a few times, but mostly benefitted from the skills of others, such as when, afloat on the USS ENTERPRISE, I watched a flight deck's worth of folks running towards the fire after a flight deck crash. They had the fire out in under seven minutes, despite two planes worth of fuel and pieces being scattered over the deck in a 100 mile per hour plus collision. I was new enough to the ship that I didn't know what a fire hose was, but in my role as a leader the next three years, I didn't have to search for motivation to make our flight deck fire fighting training as demanding and as useful as possible, and that is what I did.
I can hardly believe that there has not been another successful attack, and attribute that fact to the President's boldness in striking back. I cannot believe what that attack has cost our nation in lost souls, lives interrupted by combat injury, coin, and liberty. But I don't know that there was a better choice. Bin Laden saw his popularity fail as his strike on the West cost him Afghanistan and Iraq. He saw the Arab spring, which may yet lead to an Islamic reformation. If his point, that the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia were corrupt and evil, was correct, his prescription - hate and murder and religious persecution - was a failure, rejected even by his own son.
As the entity we call the United States of America faces the future, I hope the current wave of liberty loving will continue to thrive. We are not special because individually, we're better or smarter than the individuals of any nation. We do not deserve wealth and liberty more than citizens of other "nations." We have no greater right to employment than does any human anywhere.
We are special because we devised a system of government that, with one horrible exception, served the citizens, vice placing them in service of the government. Our heritage is one in which you and I are more significant than the state which defends our individual rights and each of us collectively. We are special because we believe that the rights of a human derive from their arrival on this planet; our rights derive from our creator, and not from the politicians and governments which control the lines on maps where arrive. We are special because we believe a man, a woman, has the right and the obligatino to make a good life based on their own ingenuity, effort, friends and family.
I am proud to have served that ideal, and I am ashamed and sometimes angry that so many that I served don't even understand the ideal and instead pander to politicians for handouts and special favors and cronyism, believing that they cannot thrive with only freedom under their wings.
It was unimaginable in 2001 that it would result in me also being in the sand with a rifle, but five years later, with a new three month old child and the expectation at that point that I would be home for the first year of our third child's life, I got another call and within five days I was in training with the US Army. Again, I was lucky to have a chance to play a role, and paying a huge personal and financial price to do so. It felt like anything but luck at the time, but in hindsight - the balance of luck was incredibly positive, if not without cost.
I remember from the day how proud and humbled I was of all the folks who were running the wrong way. I don't know who coined the phrase, but I think I got it from a t-shirt on a bomb squad Sailor. "If you see me running, run the other way." In other words, that guy was "running the wrong way", towards danger. Towards danger, to do what he and likely only he could do; risk life and limb to prevent the death and destruction of the bomb.
I saw a lot of folks "running the wrong way" in my naval and police careers - I did it myself a few times, but mostly benefitted from the skills of others, such as when, afloat on the USS ENTERPRISE, I watched a flight deck's worth of folks running towards the fire after a flight deck crash. They had the fire out in under seven minutes, despite two planes worth of fuel and pieces being scattered over the deck in a 100 mile per hour plus collision. I was new enough to the ship that I didn't know what a fire hose was, but in my role as a leader the next three years, I didn't have to search for motivation to make our flight deck fire fighting training as demanding and as useful as possible, and that is what I did.
I can hardly believe that there has not been another successful attack, and attribute that fact to the President's boldness in striking back. I cannot believe what that attack has cost our nation in lost souls, lives interrupted by combat injury, coin, and liberty. But I don't know that there was a better choice. Bin Laden saw his popularity fail as his strike on the West cost him Afghanistan and Iraq. He saw the Arab spring, which may yet lead to an Islamic reformation. If his point, that the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia were corrupt and evil, was correct, his prescription - hate and murder and religious persecution - was a failure, rejected even by his own son.
As the entity we call the United States of America faces the future, I hope the current wave of liberty loving will continue to thrive. We are not special because individually, we're better or smarter than the individuals of any nation. We do not deserve wealth and liberty more than citizens of other "nations." We have no greater right to employment than does any human anywhere.
We are special because we devised a system of government that, with one horrible exception, served the citizens, vice placing them in service of the government. Our heritage is one in which you and I are more significant than the state which defends our individual rights and each of us collectively. We are special because we believe that the rights of a human derive from their arrival on this planet; our rights derive from our creator, and not from the politicians and governments which control the lines on maps where arrive. We are special because we believe a man, a woman, has the right and the obligatino to make a good life based on their own ingenuity, effort, friends and family.
I am proud to have served that ideal, and I am ashamed and sometimes angry that so many that I served don't even understand the ideal and instead pander to politicians for handouts and special favors and cronyism, believing that they cannot thrive with only freedom under their wings.
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