Inspiring quote from Lt. Gen. Harold "Hal" Moore (USA RET.)
“In a long question-and-answer session following my speech I was asked about Iraq and then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. In this place-where cadets live by a code that says they never lie, cheat, steal, or quibble-I was bound to speak the truth as I knew it.
The war in Iraq, I said, is not worth the life of even one American soldier. As for Secretary Rumsfeld, I told them, I never thought I would live long enough to see someone chosen to preside over the Pentagon who made Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara look good by comparison. The cadets sat in stunned silence; their professors were astonished. Some of these cadets would be leading young soldiers in combat in a matter of a few months. They deserved a straight answer.
The expensive lessons learned in Vietnam have been forgotten and a new generation of young American soldiers and Marines are paying the price today, following the orders of civilian political leaders as they are sworn to do. The soldiers and those who lead them will never fail to do their duty. They never have in our history. This is their burden. But there is another duty, another burden, that rests squarely on the shoulders of the American people. They should, by their vote, always choose a commander in chief who is wise, well read in history, thoughtful, and slow-exceedingly slow-to draw the sword and send young men and women out to fight and die for their country. We should not choose for so powerful an office someone who merely looks good on a television screen, speaks and thinks in sixty-second sound bites, and is adept at raising money for a campaign.
If we can’t get that part right then there will never be an end to the insanity that is war and the unending suffering that follows in war’s wake-and we must get it right if we are to survive and prosper as free Americans in this land a million Americans gave their lives to protect and defend.”
Lt. Gen. Harold “Hal” G. Moore (USA RET.), (From a spring 2005 address he made at West Point to the Corps of Cadets)
Moore, Harold G., Galloway, Joseph L., “We Are Soldiers Still” Harper Books (2008).
This is the military that
I support. The only thing he doesn't understand is the voting process is rigged.
Prepare & Share the Message of Freedom through Positive-Peaceful-Activism.
Good post. The military
Good post. The military showed why they do what they do during the elections.It was not a fluke accident that they supported Ron Paul far and above any other candidate. Most who take the oath to preserve and defend the constitution, actually read it and know exactly what it says.
Yeah...well
...my whole life, which was probably initiated in the back seat of a car in the chaplain's garage at West Point, has been surrounded and influenced by men who came through that indoctrination. Hal Moore was my father's cadet "pop" and my parents spent a lot of time at his house. It is my experience, as mentioned in that speech, that the people wearing the uniforms of the United States will perform their "duty" as requested by their superiors. Questioning authority is not a class taught at the academy's.
The fact that their superiors are men of questionable character, or led by forces neither driven nor guided by the Constituion that they all have sworn to uphold, never comes into play. Altruism is alive and well in the military.
One only has to look at the history of the United States and incident's like the Soldier's Rebellion to understand that "duty" is simply following orders. Were our general officers all like Smeadly Butler, rather than Douglas McArthur, I might have hope but my experience and observation says otherwise. When a superior identifies an enemy and says kill, they will kill.
I just hope and pray that we are not identified as such, for we are surely out-gunned.
**“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” ~ Mark Twain **
"...there is no doubt that it (socialism) could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed". - B. Carroll Reece
I must say I
respect this man's views stated above....bump
Berwick, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
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http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2011-07-26...
Lt. Gen. Moore
He is a man of honor who still cries for his fallen troopers.