This year my niece’s husband missed Thanksgiving dinner with his wife and new four-week old son because a serious threat to U.S. National security reared its ugly head. You see, he’s an Army pilot. After serving two tours in Iraq as a helicopter crew chief, he was able to re-enlist straight into Officer’s
Candidate school and apply for training as a pilot. Now in his mid-30’s, he is qualified to fly both helicopters and airplanes.
Unfortunately, after the birth of his first child, he was sent into action and will be deployed at least through the start of the new year. In fact, he doesn’t even know when he will rotate back to his home base in Virginia.
But that is the life of a U.S. service person. They are called away to protect their country, most times to places they can’t even tell their loved ones about. He has had that happen before. In fact we thought he was going overseas last year, but priorities changed and he was kept stateside. His wife was obviously happy (as were the rest of his family), as she has just learned she was pregnant with their first child (a boy).
Members of a migrant caravan in Baja California.
This time though, the rising cross-border tensions where he was sent were so severe that his entire unit was called into action to make sure that the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of every American was ensured. That’s what U.S. soldiers do. That’s what they sign up for. We owe them our respect for their bravery and commitment to duty.
So he’ll miss his son’s first Thanksgiving and Christmas, and probably New Year. And he won’t complain about it. In fact he never does. Like his brothers in arms, he takes what he does seriously and respects the orders passed down to them, in this case all the way from the Commander-in-Chief.
For me, it’s a little harder to swallow. Because, well, I think the commander-in-chief (small letters intentional) has deprived him of spending time with his newborn son on his first holidays, for nothing more than political reasons.
Why do I say that? Well, he wasn’t sent to Korea (where he spent two years in the DMZ on a prior deployment) because of tensions building there, or to Iraq because of concerns over Iran’s increasing nuclear capabilities, or to Syria because, well, you know.
Nope. He wasn’t sent to any of those places where the optics of politics may actually be appropriately placed. He was sent to the U.S.- Mexico border. Because a bloodthirsty caravan of Latin Americans threatens to overthrow the U.S. by force and damn it, they need to be stopped. By highly trained U.S. soldiers. Because as the old nursery rhyme always said, “Stick and stones may break my bones…” And for God’s sake, these people have shown they know how to throw stones!
If they aren’t stopped they could possibly get into the U.S. and then spread crime and disease and “garbage and waste” (thank you Tucker Carlson for warning us about that one!). These animals are hiding agents of Syria, maybe some Muslims, obviously some young gang members (was it the ones hiding out in fake diapers?) and who knows what other kinds of other countries “poorer and dirtier” people (again, kudos to TC).
The commander-in-chief says so, so it has to be true, because he is NOT part of the fake news that is spread by radical far-left journalists (go ahead, say it …”like you Michael”) who spew lies and make fun of the commander- in-chief and who “only defame and belittle” and who’s “nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials … should be tested in courts,” because it “can’t be legal.”
Now obviously, as the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, has to have deeper insight into the problems at the border than I, or anyone else who reads all the fake news reports, can possibly imagine.
So, I have to trust that calling up a highly trained military unit, to defend the U.S. border against these monsters, far outweighed the need to send them to other hotspots around the globe.
Seriously though, I’m glad that the most danger he will face this holiday season may be getting hit by a rock. A lot of other service member families will go to sleep tonight worrying about their men and women who are in other much more dangerous places in the world. I respect their service members—and them—for their sacrifice.
And I respect their leaders, who do what they have to do and send them where they need to be, based on what is best for their country. I respect them all. All of them.
Well, except for one.
I’m just sayin.’
