We in the military often are accused of being slow to adjust to change and the passage of time. We are told to "get over it and move on."Get over it? I don't think so.
After the Imperial Japanese attacks on the US Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, HI, the entire country was aflame, just as the sad hulks continued smoldering away at their moorings on Battleship Row. Everyone in this nation was shocked and angry ... and wanted to hit back. Records show that the nation stayed involved, stayed angry, throughout most of World War II. Everyone was directly or indirectly involved with the war effort.
There were meatless and wheatless days at home, so US troops in the field wouldn't go hungry. Gas was rationed. Nylon was rationed. Scrap metal drives insured there was enough metal in the foundries to make armaments and munitions. Women's groups would meet weekly to roll bandages for the troops. Recruiters' offices were mobbed. Families proudly hung out flags with service stars, quietly boasting how many family members were in uniform. Some families shared their grief by hanging out gold service stars, mutely stating for all to see that some in their family had paid the ultimate price for freedom. US and Allied battles merited front page coverage in every newspaper.
We as a people, arose and answered the Call to Arms.
Now? Ehh.
Except for that tiny percentage of Americans actually in military families, almost no one is connected to the war effort. Most high school graduates are far more worried about getting into school than they are getting into their country's service.
Daily I talk to people who tell me that military service is fine for those who can't get into a good school, but their kids are going to college to get a good job. Military recruiters tell me they still treated like pariahs in Milwaukee Public Schools, even though statistics show that only 1 out of 4 high school graduates are actually cut out to finish college.
The US populace is far more interested in the fact that the Green Bay Packers beat the New Orleans Saints in the NFL opener recently, than in the fact that the job of making this country safe against terrorism is not yet finished!
I seriously doubt whether anyone in this country has actually forgotten the events of 9/11. Even if they did, the plethora of TV and Internet images depicting flaming crashes and falling towers will remind them what happened on that otherwise beautiful fall day ten years ago.
But as I reminded a Marine friend of mine on Facebook today, the nation has lost sight of its sense of anger ... righteous indignation ... of having been stabbed in the heart for virtually no other reason than the fact that we don't follow a 13th Century nightmare version of Islam.
But we in the military are your corporate memory on this issue. We remember not only the events, we remember also feeling the wrongness of what happened, and how we individually and collectively vowed to help right those wrongs.
We, each of us, vowed to carry the fight to the enemy that had reached across oceans to kill us. We, each of us, vowed not to quit and leave the job half-done.
I recall one of the Guantanamo detainees -- a Saudi Arabian cardiac surgeon who studied at Oxford and who speaks better English than I do. He likened all Americans to "insects," saying that if he could push some button somewhere that would instantly annihilate our babies, he would already have done so and lost not a moment's sleep over it.
Like insects, he said, we needed to be exterminated and forgotten about by history.
We in the military are still cold inside at the thought of those who wish to kill as many of us as they can. We are still "cold angry."
This post, then, is a plea to the rest of you.
Never forget. Never forget!
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