In memory of all those who served with us.
A funny thing happened on the
way to the war. This page is about rememberances and thoughts and dreams and
those we left behind. This page is being constantly updated as I have time. This is a
personal statement and can be considered the ideas of the OSS. If these ideas offend you,
PLEASE, go somewhere else! I received this e-mail from Larry Miller which appeared in
The Daily Standard on 14 January 2002; General Hawley,quoted it in an address he made, and
I want to share it with all of you.
General Hawley, is a newly retired USAF 4 star general. He commanded the Air Combat
Command [our front-line fighters and bombers] at Langley AFB,VA. He is now retired
and no longer required to be politically correct. A true patriot!
"Since the attack [9-11], I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of such
surpassing stupidity that they must be addressed. You've heard them too.
Here they are:
1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative." Listen
carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me
now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying "We're good" doesn't mean,
"We're perfect." Okay? The only perfect being is the bearded guy on the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country has,
with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be the
greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in
history. If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what
happens.
2) "Violence only leads to more violence." This one is so stupid you
usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it.
Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already:
Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky,
half measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully thought
through, professional, well executed violence never leads to more
violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead. That's
right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured back into the
bosom of love." Dead.
3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community have failed us."
For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs to a stake in the ground,
and now that the house has been robbed, we yell at them for not protecting
us. Starting in the late seventies, under Carter appointee Stansfield
Turner, the giant brains who get these giant ideas decided that the best
way to gather international intelligence was to use spy satellites. "After
all, (they reasoned,) you can see a license plate from 200 miles away."
This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license plate.
Unfortunately, we were attacked by humans. Finding humans is not possible
with satellites. You have to use other humans. When we bought all our
satellites, we fired all our humans, and here's the really stupid part. It
takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans into the worst places of the
world. You can't just have a guy who looks like Gary Busey in a Spring
Break '93 sweatshirt plop himself down in a coffee shop in Kabul and say
"Hiya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to meet that bin Laden fella. "Well,
you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad guys a story they'll be
telling for years.
4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at
us." Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a
desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are richer than
Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless
people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in
power. Mohammed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes
into the killing grounds is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this,
too. In the sixties and seventies, all the pinheads marching against the
war were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any cause they could
think of to get out of their final papers and spend more time drinking.
It's the same today.
5) "Any profiling is racial profiling." Who's killing us here, the
Norwegians? Just days after the attack, the New York Times had an
article saying dozens of extended members of the gazillionaire bin Laden
family living in America were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff,
never to return to studying at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm
crushed. Please come back. Let's all stop singing "We Are the World" for a
minute and think practically. I don't want to be sitting on the floor in
the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt.Rushmore and turn,
grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we didn't offend
them."
SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year: Never to forget our murdered
brothers and sisters. Never to let the relativists get away with their
immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's political
science professor says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper
sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "No
More Pearl Harbors."
We are a proud member of Operation Just Cause. There are too many questions
still unanswered about our MIA's.
I had to address a meeting of the Public Utilities Commission a couple of
years back. I opened my address with "Most of you think that Disabled Vet's
are those guys standing in front of K-Mart with a white cup, asking for
donations. But I'm here today to let you know that you're wrong! We're
the Junk Yard Dogs that you tried to put to pasture and out of your minds.
I want you to know, we're still here and we remember daily, what you
didn't do for us!"
And that brings up the concept of giving Vets a 3% advantage on State bids.
Before We got our act together and lobbied Congress and the State Legislature
to do away with the Women and Minority preferences, OR at least bring us up
to their level, we were still the throw aways.
Southern California Edison even went so far as to say "We do 16 billion dollars
a year in sales, Disabled Veterans couldn't handle 3% of that".
And you know what, they may be right. But we sure would like to try. If you figure
the average State contract runs $300,000., 3% of that is $9,000. Now if we're selling
a product that gives us a 6% profit, that means that we make $1,800 before expenses.
Not quite equitable is it? Minorities and women were born that way - We were created
by congress. And believe me, I would rather be a woman or a minority than DISABLED!
Copyright © 1998-2004 SRL
Last modified:29 November 2004 14:40
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