Not to long ago I put up a post and a link to a query: Where are the Heroes?
In that post I mentioned a man that has been put up for the CMH(posthumous), and asked just how many of you had seen news stories about him...
Well, here is the story of another hero, and I doubt that you read much about him either. In the news, he'll be mentioned as "another soldier died in Iraq today, from wounds inflicted by an IED."
But the FACT is that the IED didn't inflict that grave a wound; this man literaly burned himself to the point where he didn't survive treatment by REPEATEDLY re-entering the Bradley that he and his team had been riding in to rescue teammates that had sustained shrapnel wounds from the blast and couldn't escape the burning vehicle unaided.
This man DIDN'T have to die, his initial wounds were minor, yet he went back repeatedly into a conflagration to save those men that had been entrusted into his care. And upon reaching the Aid Station, his only concern was for those men.
This man deserves, at the minimum, a Bronze Star....I would contend that he deserves the CMH. Yet even in the linked story, his name isn't mentioned, he's merely a memory of the Doctor that attempted to save his life...and as that doctor said: "I met the first of many heroes on the night of the Bradley incident. The courage and sacrifice of this soldier is not isolated. It is the norm here, a daily occurrence."(emph. mine)
The point is, our Media is lying to us by ommission...let John Murtha claim "our troops are broken down" and it's front page news...yet let a man sacrifice his life so that his teammates could live, and he is "another soldier died In Iraq today".
We are fast coming to a point where we have to make some hard decisions about our future in Iraq. EVERY soldier that I've talked to that has been there says "let us stay until the job is done", yet the Media and half of our political animals are clamoring for "timetables" and "benchmarks for withdrawel".
The fact is that we made the Iraqi people a promise to leave them with a stable government and a country with a good foothold on recovery back to a nation to be proud of; and the Iraqis have heard that promise and believed it, as evidenced by the burgeoning numbers of men volunteering to put, not only themselves, but their families, in danger by joining the military and police forces. If we leave before the job is accomplished, we will have made ourselves liars, and shamed all those that made a sacrifice of their body in the effort. We will have proven Al Quada correct when they said that the American people were too soft and had no stomach for a fight. You think the war is swelling the Terrorist ranks?!? Just wait until you see the increase in those ranks when the perception that the U.S. is a paper tiger as Bin Laden had claimed sinks in!
The blood of heroes cries out loud and strong to stay the course and make their sacrifices meaningful, but that cry is being muted by a Media that cares for naught but promoting the agenda of self-serving political animals that use populist meme's to try to weasel their way back into power, regardless of the harm that would be done to the nation.
Posted by Delftsman3 at December 27, 2005 10:43 AM | TrackBack