Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Values

Values

I am reading a second book, Lone Survivor, about a friend of Kris Kyle’s who was also a Seal and became the lone survivor of a patrol in Afghanistan. It is written in a much different style than Kris’s book but it contains much new information and perspective on aspects of this Nation’s war on terror. Marcus Lutrell is also from Texas. What is it with all these Texans involved in SOF operations anyway? Actually it only reinforces my conviction that Southerners produce a disproportionate number of this nation’s best soldiers. Don’t get me wrong they come from everywhere in all shapes colors and sizes but the distribution is skewed towards the South where traditional values are still held in high esteem. In the South the average citizen still gets what America is all about.

In my blog I mentioned yesterday about the change in orientation when an operator turns a model that is going away, into a bank and then gets the airplane to turn around and approach the operator from the opposite direction. For an instant the brain has to shift between “right” in the going away mode and “right” coming towards you. If your mind doesn’t make the transition you go into a really steep bank and can easily crash. I hope I didn’t confuse anyone….Probably most of my devoted readers skip over the non-writing related parts anyway but I try and be clear in what I’m trying to say.

Linda (my wife) says I ought to write a book on writing. She sees some of the things I am trying in the EWW as different from what is constantly being repeated in the litany of writing books that are constantly being published. For my part I am thinking about a book on Dieting that comes at it more from a discipline perspective than a scientific one. Then there is my fantasy Novel, Essence and the Stones idling away as I try and integrate some of the great techniques in the Game of Thrones series. Oh well, it is good for my soul to have a diversity of interests even if it keeps me from focusing exclusively on one and being successful at it. I already feel successful enough and if I never get more recognition I will have had more than my fair share.

In reading these two recent books on the War on Terror I have reconnected with many of my past experiences in Vietnam that I would have preferred to forget. I see improvements in technology but I also see the same old problems and read between the lines a struggle behind doing the soldiers job in the face of all the restrictions imposed by the system that have such a debilitating effect on the moral and spirit of our fighting men and women. It’s a wonder they have any spirit, initiative and enthusiasm for what they do when mired in all the administration and red tape. When leaders fear being called into criminal court to answer for their actions, more than they fear failure to accomplish the mission, the military is heading down the wrong road. When the public’s right to know leads to the embedding of reporters and photographers from hostile media intent upon portraying our brave men and women as criminals committing atrocities this has a chilling effect on our troops overseas and begins to sap the aggressiveness that soldiers need to have. I saw this in Vietnam where there ultimately was the need to keep reassuring and explaining to soldiers the need to aggressively seek out the enemy when they were constantly barraged by the propaganda of our Socialist leaning media.

This is the underlying message in these two books, written by two of our Heroes who found a way to get their message out to a public that is clueless to how bad conditions are getting. When those two intelligence officers were recently killed by a lone gunman in Afganistan... inside a high security facility in Kabul, someone unnamed should have asked what the gunman was really after instead of apologizing and attributing the motive to the burning of Korans.