Jordan, Good To Go

On the far left: Private Moehnle relaxing at my house a few days before a temporary deployment to Hell.

George S. Patton once said of the Germans when faced with our troops in combat: "By God, I almost feel sorry for the sons of bitches, I really do". I don't think he would espouse a similar sentiment for today's islamic terrorist.

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It’s 8:45 on a Monday morning as I write this. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair, in a climate controlled environment alternating between typing and sipping a venti latte’. The only danger I’ve encountered is the usual twit on the cell phone while driving, a true urban threat. My little boy was still dreaming of Lego helicopters, my daughter of her favorite horse as I left for work today. The day moves on, largely an uneventful progression of time worthy of no more notice than any other day. Tonight, I’ll have a choice of what to eat, maybe enjoy a cigar, rounding out the day in a comfortable bed.

How is it we take these luxuries for granted as normal?…..as expected?

While so much of humanity toils under dictatorships, brutal fundamentalist theocracies, crushing poverty, social decay, or outright oppression, most Americans are inconvenienced by not much more than an irritating commute or rising interest rates.

How did we get to this point? We know it wasn’t always this way. The Civil War, the Great Depression, and certainly World War II taught us that life could be tenuous if not fleeting altogether. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were by no means guaranteed with war, economic chaos or Nazism on the march. What were the costs so long ago tendered by millions of great yet simple men I’ll never know? What unnamed horrors did they endure beyond what movies tell us that made it possible for me as a boy to just go to school without being hungry or scared?

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There is an old black and white picture of my Father, taken in 1943. He was in his early 20’s, wearing his blue (navy blue) Navy uniform. He answered the nation’s call in those years of uncertainty with the conviction of purpose that so often accompanies the confidence of youth. From stories he told me, he had no idea if he would ever come back home, given the fact that he saw naval combat in some major campaigns. He also told me that ‘everyone wanted to serve. A guy in his 20’s out of uniform stateside was a very unpopular person’. There was a stigma attached to ‘wash-outs’. He saw action against the Japanese in the South Pacific, took some shrapnel in one arm and also took some tuberculosis in both lungs from a prisoner of war. After recovering stateside, he went about his business as usual, because everyone ‘just did his job’. My Dad died in 2003, but I keep a pair of his shoes nearby to remind me that I can never fill them. He and a million others ‘just did their jobs’; ridding the world of a tyranny the world had never known before.

There is another picture I often stare at. This one is of a young man, 19 years old, who, as I type this is en route to Fallujah, Iraq. There is no draft, no compulsion by many of his peers to join in the struggle, which in my mind represents even greater stakes than World War II. Like those before him such as my father, he answered the call, and willingly. While most of his contemporaries are more concerned with which easy class to sign up for, what the coolest first-person-shooter video game is, or how much beer they can consume this Friday, Jordan will be immersed into the rest of the real world, with its immense depravation and cruelty. He will be in a real war, blunting the efforts of those who would love nothing more than to bring their brand of single-minded hatred to the very homes of those young American men so spoiled by the efforts of those who came before them, and of those like Jordan who now reach deep down inside themselves to see what they’re made of, to see If they’ve got what it takes to stand up to a flesh and blood enemy that gladly descends to the nadir of human ugliness. The enemy Jordan will face knows only the saturnalia of death, of murder, of torture, of destruction at all levels. This enemy is no other we have faced. This enemy must be stopped and crushed at all expense, for if we waver………he will not. Jordan recognized this, even though it may have been a distant recognition in the past few years, an intangible truth that demanded acknowledgement. And so it is, our young military consisting of professionals with discipline, honor, and ethics against an enemy that intentionally blows up Muslim children next to ice cream trucks, shoots muslims at weddings and funerals, and beheads muslims on street corners simply because they may have driven a truck or done any number of things not consistent with the mindset of hate or Sha’rhia law.

And while we are winning this war (we can only lose it in the American press) and will continue to do so, it will be a long nine months, and I look forward to seeing him once again in my home with that quiet demeanor and subtle humor. My one wish is that I could be there with him, for good or bad.

You, me, and our country is lucky to have men like Jordan, and when we see them anywhere we should let them know. They may not always be there.

May you sleep well tonight, courtesy of Jordan Moehnle.