Copyright 2011 by John T. Reed
When I get more details, I will write about the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Tonight, I just wanted to comment about the celebrations outside the White House. Those were all college-age kids. Many were waving American flags and dancing.
They seemed to be vicariously taking credit for the operation. There was no video or even still photos of the soldiers and airmen who actually did this.
Here is one thing I am virtually certain of: The only thing those college kids wildly celebrating outside the White House hate more than Osama bin Laden is the draft, which might have put them where the soldiers and airmen who actually did the operation were.
I am also almost certain than those people who were waving American flags and dancing victory dances were not veterans.
How can I tell that?
Veterans cheer victory. They cheer even during combat when an artillery round or air attack hits an enemy position that is shooting at them. But their cheering is typically muted and brief and unconsciously dignified. Why?
Because they immediately think of their fellow soldiers who are no longer here to join in the celebration. They also think of the fact that Osama bin Laden, for all his immorality and insane, gratuitous belligerence, was a soldier of sorts on the other side.
Americans in Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Afghanistan spend part of every day worrying about whether a group of enemy are going to suddenly burst into their base camp and murder them, or kill them with mortars or rockets. No doubt, bin Laden has, too, for the last ten years. American vets know how bin Laden felt in his last moments and how many times we thought about the same thing happening to us when we were “over there.” Odd as it may seem to non-vets, there is a kinship among soldiers on the opposite sides during a war. Odd as it may seem, American veterans have more in common with bin Laden and the Taliban in terms of combat fear than they do with the never-set-foot-in-the-military-nor-would-have college kids celebrating the military’s actions on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In addition to spending eight years in the Army including a tour in Vietnam, I also coached 15 football teams. In football, there is an expression: “bulletin board material.” It refers to a member of your team or coaching staff saying or doing something publicly that insults or otherwise provokes your upcoming opponent gratuitously. George W. Bush made that mistake when he publicly said, “Bring it on” to al Qaeda. He later expressed regret for it. I do not know how many additional U.S. soldiers died as a result of that comment, but probably more than zero.
Now we have American teenagers and people in their early twenties taunting al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Muslims in general in front of the White House. Their dancing and other unnecessary behavior will no doubt be shown on al Jazeera. Our military went to war in 2001 and America went to the mall. On Sunday night, they briefly took time off from the mall to taunt the enemy from the safe distance of 7,000 miles. Then they left the American soldiers and marines who are only hundreds of yards away from the enemy to deal with the newly angered al Qaeda and Taliban. The celebrants have a frat party to go to, and the mall. And “Oh, yeah. Thank you for your service.”
Today, it was bin Laden on the other side who got it. Last month, it was their best friend in Afghanistan. Next month, it may be them. The enemy may step up their efforts to kill Americans because of the killing of bin Laden. These are sobering facts that prevent those who know what this is truly about from exhibiting the uninhibited showing off of the college kids.
World War II subrmariners and submariners in the Falkland Islands War in 1982 could hear the explosion when their torpedo hit the enemy ship. They can hear the sounds of the ship breaking up and sinking. I am told there is little or no cheering. They are too aware of what is happening to the sailors on the ship they hit at that moment, sailors who are in almost all ways, just like them, sailors who are at that moment dying or about to die.
There but for the grace of God go I is the sobering thought that occurs. Another sobering thought is that it came too late to save Mike or Lenny.
There was an unseemly lack of such sobriety at the White House celebration, because of an equally unseemly lack of veterans in that military-aged crowd.
The draft is considered a long dead issue in America. It should not be. Please read my article on the surprisingly numerous and strong reasons why we should have a draft and arguably only a draft.
If we did have a draft, that crowd would have had more veterans and more people who knew soldiers or marines who got killed or wounded, more people who had a clue about what they were celebrating, and less dancing and flag waving. Veterans, probably would have cried, and sung “God Bless America,” and went off to drink a toast to their buddies who were not able to attend.
John T. Reed
