Dear Broadside Editors,
It was nice to see the anti-military issue addressed in the December/Holiday edition of the school newspaper. I would like to make some of my thoughts known too. As the daughter of a mother and father who have retired from the United States Navy, the granddaughter of a fighter pilot and former deputy commander of an air force base of another country and the great-granddaughter of a man who lost his life in the U.S. Army in WWII in a death march, a heaviness, sadness and fire overcomes me when I hear others criticize this country’s military.
The men and women of the U.S. military are some of the most organized, thoughtful, dedicated and strongest people on this planet, and they deserve our respect. To increasingly reduce their efforts from honorable to evil is repulsive. Just who do we think we are? We have no right, no right at all, to bite the hand that so generously and willingly is the source of our security of free will and free expression.
They sacrifice their lives, professional and personal, on a daily basis; they have to leave their families behind and face endless months at sea and in the arid desert, fighting for something they proudly believe in, while we indulge in the comforts and luxuries of our lives at home, with the freedoms bought at so high a price at their expense. And yet, how do they feel when they finally come home? After a long and frustrating deployment, they are met with hostility and criticism by the very people they protect. It is absolutely disgusting. They do not deserve that treatment, least of all from the people in their home country, whom they protect. And yet, instead of honoring our heroes, we are breaking them down and discouraging them, calling them “predators” and “murderers” when it is we who are behaving like insensitive animals towards them. May it be for our everlasting shame.
We all ought to point the finger at ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for such disgrace; we need to count our blessings, and be grateful to the ones who so willingly paid for it. After all, they are the ones braving the front lines so that you and I don’t have to be.
Sincerely,
A. Perez
Junior
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