Congressmen and Congresswomen, before you sign that bill putting more pork
into your district or state at the expense of the right stuff for the troops who do the dying,
Generals and admirals, colonels and captains, before you allow training,
discipline and the warrior-ethic to be further degraded, Sergeants and Chiefs, before you execute that dumb order - - ushering in
another politically correct nitwit idea -- from some enlightened sweet
smelling bureaucrat in a distant ivy tower, Drill Sergeants, before you go along with an order to lighten up on your
new recruits because youíre told the need to develop hardened warriors
who'll make it through old fashioned combat is obsolete, Defense Secretary Cohen, before you again overrule a panel that has
carefully studied why mixing women and men in basic entry training doesn't
work, Defense contractors, before you build the next unneeded but
good-for-corporate-bottom-line, gold-plated wonder weapon that gobbles up
defense dollars, leaving too little money left to equip and train our men
for battle, Newt Gingrich, before you push through another deal in Congress to
purchase $1.5 billion worth of C-130 cargo aircraft made in your Georgia
district, that the Air Force doesn't need, Trent Lott, before your order another $1.5 billion carrier to be built in
your hometown that the Navy doesn't want, Veterans who sit in silence while America's military machine is being
destroyed and talk about the good old days when you were young and brave,
And those of you who've bought the propaganda that women have already
served successfully in combat because women soldiers liberated a dog kennel
during the invasion of Panama, drove trucks or fixed planes during the Gulf
War or pumped gas or directed traffic in Somalia and are thus qualified for
future ground combat duty such as was fought at Normandy in 1944 or on the
streets on Mogadishu in 1993, Readers, before you believe the Pentagon's Desert Storm hype that all
future wars can be now won in a bloodless 100 hours by pushing buttons,
launching smart missiles, maintaining smarter satellites and by a jolly fat
TV general with a pointer, Our military has lost its edge since Desert Storm and is terribly
vulnerable. Bill Clinton, you are our commander in chief. Before you push
your political agenda in any other way that further weakens our forces, RYAN is raw, ugly, brutal, deadly honest and captures infantry battle as
no other Hollywood film has.
Steven Spielberg says his masterpiece is an antiwar film. He's right.
Anyone with a lick of common sense that sees it will do anything possible
to escape the horror of war.
But SAVING PRIVATE RYAN won't stop madmen like Saddam Hussein. Just
before the monsters three -- Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo -- brought their
holocaust to planet earth, a 1930s war movie ALL IS QUIET ON THE WESTERN
FRONT came out. It too profoundly affected millions of people but still
didn't stop those mass murderers from killing tens of millions of humans
between 1939-45.
So films, regardless of how real and true, do influence our feelings and
thoughts but don't deter war. Only well-trained, well-equipped, well-led
soldiers can stop a madman from unleashing the dogs of war. I can only pray
that our future congressional leaders before they add more pork to a
defense bill will see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
Hopefully, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN will jolt enough of us back to our good
senses to demand a force with the discipline and sense of mission shown by
those fine men who won WWII.
Don't forget what Captain Miller told Private Ryan; "If the sacrifices of our heroic dead are to have any meaning, we've got to earn it."
Mothers, before you believe the line that your daughters should serve in
ground combat like your sons, brothers, husbands and fathers might have
done,
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING
PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING
PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
go
see SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
Soldier, Author, Columnist
