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GyG1345
01-29-03, 07:32 AM
The very best men
Posted: January 28, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Richard Botkin
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
In case you have not noticed, America is going to war. For the average citizen, the real cost of this conflict cannot yet be quantified in economic or social terms.

Angst is up, retirement plan values are reduced, but unless you have lost a job in the post 9-11 slowdown or were related to one of the attack victims, your losses are mostly self-inflicted psychic wounds. If those in the legal profession could come up with the method, it would be wonderful in this society which so celebrates victimhood to be able to sue and reclaim what Saddam and Osama seem to have taken from us.

As with all wars fought, the real costs are born mostly by those who do the fighting and the dying, and those who love them. We often hear about how the war in Vietnam was disproportionately endured by the lower socio-economic classes and by men of color - about how the elite, the smart fat cats, as a group, were able to manipulate the system to their advantage, to pursue things other than defending freedom while those inner-city and backwoods boys went toe-to-toe with the NVA and VC.

Fortunately, the myths of Vietnam have been partially put to rest by books such as "Stolen Valor" by E.G. Burkett. Burkett's research is encyclopedic, thorough and complete. It easily disabuses the notion still advanced all too often in liberal circles that poor whites and blacks were used as cannon fodder to fight what has been our nation's most divisive modern-day conflict.

In the years ahead, it will be curious to see how future historians treat this war against evil and how they will categorize those who will fight it. While many still incorrectly look at Vietnam as the poor man's war, some pine for the seeming democratization of suffering imparted by the war against Hitler and Tojo. It was not just the regular folks on Main St. who sent their sons. In those days, they also came from the richest and most powerful families. President Roosevelt's son earned a Navy Cross serving as a Marine Raider. His special adviser, Harry Hopkins, lost a son serving with the Marines in the Pacific. And were it not for his older brother's death in European combat, we might have had a different Kennedy as president.

The 1940 census lists our country's population at right around 131 million. By World War II's end the ranks of our military had swelled to beyond 12 million men and women. There was hardly a family that did not have at least one son or cousin or nephew serving somewhere in uniform. Today, our nation of nearly 300 million citizens are ably served by barely 1.5 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. It is entirely possible, and in fact probable, that most Americans know only of a son or a daughter of a friend of a friend who is somewhere in service. The sacrifices this time are certainly not equally shared. Victory or defeat rests on the creative and physical abilities - the raw courage - of men and women we mostly do not know.

In case the reader is not privileged to have served as or to know a Marine, a bit of education is important. The United States Marine Corps, as a total organization, has no equal in the entire American experience. Do not misunderstand this as mere puffery or dogma. This takes nothing away from the other services or from the sacrifices made by those of the Army, Navy and Air Force in securing the freedoms we all enjoy. In fact, as an aside, I would argue that it was the submarine service that was the single greatest military deterrent that gave us victory in the Cold War.

What I would humbly try to reduce to words is the absolute sacred reverence that most Marines have for their Corps. Whether one has served as officer or enlisted, once the title "Marine" is earned, it is forever engraved and seared into one's soul, never to be removed and impossible to deprogram.

Among my own Marine friends are several with advanced degrees from prestigious schools, yet it is the eagle, globe and anchor which, to them, matters most. As one Marine greets another he can be assured that their common heritage and experience binds them together like nothing else. The bond transcends time and race and class. When the Marine Corps is your "Roots," your living family extends from those remaining octogenarians who served at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima to the young, pimply lance corporal today who just set sail for duty overseas.

As a former Marine, years retired from active and reserve duty - yet not so many that close comrades are not impacted by the recent buildup - it is with very mixed emotions that I watch these friends prepare to go and do what all Marines are trained to do.

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GyG1345
01-29-03, 07:33 AM
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Fortunately for us, the protected, this slice of America is anything but typical. This is the one bite from the entire gallon of ice cream that has all the chocolate...