Watch the amazing interview below with Dakota Meyer, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor last week for unbelievable heroism in battle in Afghanistan.
It made me cry for two reasons. First, because his heroism is so awesome. And second because this sort of thing is inevitable when governments don’t want to win wars. The officers at the command center certainly were negligent. But if the US government hadn’t hamstrung their warriors with rules of engagement that make it impossible to fight the officers in the rear probably wouldn’t have been so insensitive to the situation on the ground that ended up requiring Meyer and his brothers to make incomprehensible sacrifices to save those that were not saved by the chain of command.
We have seen this sort of thing over and over again in all the wars democracies have fought beginning in Vietnam.
I’m reading a pretty good novel now about that war and the hideous 1960s called Altamont Augie. The book explores the question of whether people on opposite ends of the political divide can love each other. If you’re looking for a good novel that to a degree brings us back to the beginning of Western Civilization’s suicide attempt, this may be for you.
Anyway, watch the interview with Meyer and consider Churchill’s statement after the Battle of Britain, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
The only problem with Churchill’s words is that in truth the many always owe our lives to the few. This is especially the case now when the heirs of the 1960s “New Left” have so constrained our permitted discourse that our leaders are cowed into submission and refuse to do what it takes to defend our way of life.
God bless Meyer and his brothers in the US Marine Corps and the rest of the US armed forces who fight because it’s the right thing to do. God bless the warriors of the Israel Defense Force who do the same. And may we live to see the day when these men and women are led by leaders worthy of their sacrifices.
15 Comments