“The Cost of freedom is Always High, but Americans have Always Paid It.

I’ve thought about it for a long while, now... and I have concluded that the US needs to recant its pledge not to be the first to use the atom bomb in a war/conflict. I mean, hey, we did it, already. Two of them, in fact! Perhaps you remember August 1945 and a place called Japan??? I do!

Look, we are allowing ourselves to be tied up in these little brushfire wars in Afghanistan, and Iraq, when both could be ended by a flight of B-2’s and a few nukes.

The problem in Iran? Well, Mr. Ahmadinejad wants the atomic bomb? Well, I say give it to him, several actually, delivered from the bomb bay of a B-2, or
B-52 bomber.

Then… the little squirt in North Korea, we could provide a demonstration of what a REAL Atomic blast looks like… up close and personal!

For those of you screaming at the computer and pulling your hair out about now, YES, I know it is extreme! But understand this: the whiners, and those who bitch, and moan, about the war going badly, and those who force our armed forces to fight with one, or both, hands tied behind their backs are, quite frequently, the same people. They are quickly pushing the US into a corner. A corner, from which, the only means of escape is to lash out in all directions. The most effective way to do that is with our atomic arsenal.

I hear the “national scolds” complaining that we have now been in Iraq as long as it took for us to fight the Second World War. Well, actually that’s true, but we have less KIA’s that we racked up the day we hit the beach in Normandy!

So, you want to leave Iraq? Well, let’s leave… and leave it a radioactive pile of debris for the next few thousand years.

We have the material, the methods, and the means to take out any country causing trouble for us in the world. I gotta tell you, those atomic weapons, as costly as they are, would be more cost efficient than placing a couple hundred thousand troops on the ground, in a troublesome region, and supporting those troops while forcing them to fight handicapped. And that is what we are doing, currently!

Hey, I’m tired of all the bellyaching, all the bitching, and moaning, coming from the very people who could not screw up enough courage to defend their own shadow. I’m tired of good, loyal, American men and women spilling their blood and laying down their lives for a whole segment of our society who have no respect, nor love for the country nor their fellow Americans. I’m tired of the useful idiots our enemies find, in abundance, in the governing bodies in Washington.

We have become two nations, again, much as this country split in the 1860’s. I’m not talking about a North/South split… I’m talking about a “Love America/Hate America” split. The coming election will do nothing to bring us closer together… no matter who wins. We are hopelessly split apart and the Union, though it appears as one on paper, in reality… it no longer exists. Neither side has any interest, at all, in rejoining the other.

The “Hate America” and the “Blame America First” crowds (one and the same) have sapped this country of its will to survive. Any medical practitioner will tell you that when the will to survive is gone… all is lost.

The story is told of a Confederate general, during the darkest days of the America Civil War, sending a dispatch to the Commanding General, Gen Robert E. Lee. In the dispatch, the Southern general is said to report that he and his troops were cut off, vastly outnumbered, the causality rate was extremely high, they were without provisions, and their ammunition was all but gone. In summation that Southern cavalier told Gen. Lee he would do the only thing left for him, and his men, to do. So, he said, they would attack, at dawn, with everything they had at their disposal!

That is the America I was born into. That is the America I grew up in. That is the America for which I wore the uniform of the US Army, and that is the America, which does not exist anymore.

I am frustrated with “mealy-mouthed” Americans who will willingly accept "second place". In my America, second place didn’t exist… in anything. Like the US Marine Corp, the improbable we did right away. The impossible took us just a tad longer.

I have been chided for stating that the US losses in Iraq are well within the "acceptable" range. Look, you don’t go to war if deaths are not acceptable. Rather, you bow your head and bare your neck to the chains of slavery. If you would remain free you must be willing to pay the price. The price for freedom is high. It is paid in the blood of patriots… the men and women of out Armed Forces.

I am heartsick at what this nation has become. America is now a cesspool of deviancy, mediocrity, cowardice, socialism, secularism, hedonism, and, finally… we are without hope.

Somewhere, about the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, Americans, like the shirker, in the Bible, decided to bury our talents for safekeeping rather than risk it in order to have it grow and benefit the country. Now we are paying the price for that reticence to risk everything for each other.

We are growing apart as a people. Our national conversation has grown shrill and vulgar. We can’t communicate with each other. When we try, it turns into a shouting match. We have become course, crass, and without sophistication. Our gentility is gone.

Finally, we have painted ourselves into a corner. A corner, which threatens to deny us, even our survival. Only drastic action will save us… and, unfortunately, many Americans do not wish to be saved and those who do... are not interested in saving those who don’t. We are feeding upon ourselves.

I began this post by pointing out where this attitude of mediocrity has gotten America in its war-fighting capability and the cost to recover that capability. Atomic Bombs will certainly win for us on the battlefields, but they will do nothing to salvage our land.

American men and women in uniform are growing tired of sacrificing their blood, limbs, and lives, for fellow Americans who actually want them to lose! And why would they not? The trust for their fellow Americans has been forever shattered. When the time comes for them to send their young sons and daughters to war for the US … will they do it? Can you blame them?

When a nation's vision is forced to dissipate, that nation is doomed. When a nation’s hopes, and dreams, and aspirations, are shelved because social programs take precedence over that national vision… the death knell has sounded. When a nation sends it’s national treasure, its sons and daughters, into harm’s way… and abandons them, that nation has lost its soul.

Here are the words of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, a man even his own party would seek to impeach today:

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”… Pres. John F. Kennedy

Kennedy also said:

“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction”

President Harry Truman, the 33rd President of the US, said the following:

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

Nowadays, the men mentioned above would be accused of insisting on “staying the course”. They would be ridiculed and hounded from office… even by their own Democrat Party.

That, Dear Reader, is how far we have sunk!

Longstreet