lifelibertyhonor2.jpg

The More Real "Left Behind" Agony

Home
America's Core Values
Civics & Society
Patriotism & Resistance Journal
Wise Governance
God & Politics
Elections & Campaigns
On War and the Military
Foolish Theoretical Foreign Policy
Broadcast Betrayal
The Stampeders
On Economic Issues
Humor, Satire & Parody
Immigration
The Ultimate Indictment of Christian Hypocrisy
Lietta Ruger: Crawford Tx, and Bring Them Home Now
Contact Arthur

 

The More Real "Left Behind" Agony

The spouse left behind to tend to all that is required to care for family needs is indeed messy. I used the word noble to try to cast the need for persistent, diligent, dogged and determined courage for the left behind spouse to persevere as an unacknowledged nobility. I'm not sure I want to elevate the fact of the grittiness to a higher level as much as try to focus some attention on military family life in times of deployment.

I do take exception to the use of "wringing our hands". That is campaign propaganda that has lived on past it's intended usefulness. President Bush was re-elected and is in place for his second term. The time for the campaign talk has come to a close and doesn't serve well to bring us together, rather serves to keep us divided. I am not inclined to participate in furthering that agenda. And I'm not sure I am wringing my hands in distress as much as taking a position of activism to stave off the state of wringing my hands and doing nothing more.

I respect the long rich history of each of our family's military service. It surely covers our country's recent history in war activities. Actually, I take a slightly different view of purpose of military. While it is and should be war-ready, I'm not sure that the function of having a ready military is the act of war as much as a preventive presence to prevent war. Ahhh, but then I come from the cold-war era so it may color my thinking some.

911, well, the simplicity of what has become popular news is that

a) we were attacked by outside, foreign, democracy-hating and brutal terrorists;

b) it was Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden (gee who told us that, by the way, and how did they know so quickly after the fact yet not before the fact?);

c) our country was unprepared and defenseless against this supposed surprise attack;

d) we must now engage to wipe out terrorists everywhere. Those are the popular stories and reporting and thus the popular belief.

I'm not sure I want to get into an exploration of the events of 911, as it was indeed a tragic assault inside our borders and left us as a country feeling fragile and awakened to our vulnerability as a nation on the changing world stage. On the day of 911, however, as I watched with the rest of the country, my own childhood military brat background came charging to the fore with one single question; "where are our birds in the air"?

When my Air Force family was stationed at SAC, Omaha, by osmosis and sometimes explanation, I learned from my father that our country was always in readiness mode against any incoming or perceived attack/threat and birds would be in the air instantly and all over it.

No one needed to tell me what I was viewing was not entirely suspicious without the activity of our own Air Force/Norad in movement. It left a strong impression that still causes me to have doubts about the popular accounting of what happened 911. That tends to continue to color my thinking about all the events that followed taking us into war in Iraq as relevant to a response to 911.

Our troops, when deployed, do what they are trained to do: follow orders and keep questions to themselves, which applies as well to their families. Again, I am not challenging that discipline or premise. It is as it has always been and likely always will be for the military culture, troops and families.

Even so, do you not sense within that we need citizens of our country to ask the challenging questions and expect reasonable explanations as to why it is necessary to send troops into combat?

By now the glaring falsehoods that predicated the need to take the troops to combat in Iraq are abundantly clear. Now that the administration has put us in this position, is it not reasonable to continue to both challenge and ask questions about the validity, purpose, function, outcome, duration and reflect on if our nation is strengthened or weakened by the continued aggression?

Citizens need to do that, in my opinion, if they are taking an active role of participation in our country's well being. Military families, by their very culture, are enjoined from participating with much of a public voice.

I have chosen a different role as a military family who still holds with the values of military culture. I see a need to strengthen the role that military families hold in this particular war as I see us moving from the decades of cold war to decades of hot war. This is not the legacy I see for my loved ones who enlisted in the military, nor am I sure it is the role they anticipated for themselves, to become life-long warriors, in combat repeatedly and indefinitely.

Lietta Ruger Publisher, Legacy

© Arthur & Lietta Ruger 2002-2008. The American Choice is a  political internet journal based in Bay Center, Washington. The views expressed not authored by Arthur or Lietta Ruger are the writers' own and do not necessarily reflect those of The American Choice or SwanDeer Productions. Permission of author required for reprinting original material, and only requests for reprinting a specific item are considered.

mailto:arthur@swandeer.com