My cousin Mike sent me the following letter from an ROTC cadet preparing for commencement this Friday, May 18, I believe, at The College of New Jersey. I’ve been unable to confirm the writer’s full name but his letter is well worth a read, especially the quote from Sam Adams at the end. God bless our troops!
Friends,
In one month, my colleagues and I will become the newest officers in the United States Army when we are commissioned at The College of New Jersey. We go off to various branches; infantry, field artillery, ordnance, quartermaster, aviation, medical service corps. Some of us are going into the New Jersey National Guard, some active duty.
We all expect to go to Iraq. We are all conscientious, intelligent, well-informed college students. We all contracted after 9/11and after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. We all chose this path and we are all proud to serve. We disagree on many things - I am an evangelical traditional conservative (I say think Edmund Burke gone federalist), but there are atheists and democrats in our program as well. We all agree that the United States faces a very real enemy and that the United States is worth defending, even unto death.The above is true of all of us. What follows is my opinion.
I wish I could say that Senator Reid’s comments were surprising. But the truth is that the Democrats have never convincingly supported the troops. They throw the term around as a disclaimer, a modifier to be followed by political posturing. “I support our troops, but this President…” or “We support the troops which is why we want them out of this civil war.” Claiming to support the troops has always smacked of a sort of legal caveat at the end of a commercial. Like the quickly flashing text on an Audi commercial “Driving professional on closed course. Do not attempt.”
As I prepare for my career in the Army, whether it is four years or twenty four, I wonder if Senator Reid would like to speak at our commissioning ceremony. He can tell us he supports us, and that we are going off to fight a war that has already been lost. After all, the leader of the Senate has proclaimed it for the world to see. Perhaps he thinks since it is lost we should give up the struggle. There is nothing wrong with recognizing defeat and submitting to your enemy: we call it an official surrender, and we have grown accustomed to receiving them, not issuing them.
Does he honestly believe that our nation is at the end of its capabilities?
George Washington and John Adams did not surrender when the British had taken New York, Rhode Island, and New Jersey and driven the Continental Army back across the Delaware. Even when Washington’s army was leaving in droves as enlistments ended and the treasury ran dry, these real Americans clenched their jaws and prepared to surrender their lives for freedom.
You can delude yourselves and say that he is being realistic, or you can embrace some nonsense anti-war agenda. But the fact of the matter is that some things are worth the fight, worth the sacrifice. There is no “diplomatic” solution to armed extremists trying to kill us. And I seem to remember something about some airplanes flying into some buildings a few years back…
I have a message for Senator Harry Reid, a message from the past that is heard in the wailing and groaning of our founders turning in their graves:
“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What should be the reward of such sacrifices?’ Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” - Samuel Adams
Behold a man of virtue, worthy of the office Senator Reid disgraces.
S. Lee [Last name withheld]
CDT, US Army ROTC
The College of New Jersey
Philosophy//Classics//Law and Politics