Posted by
The INFORMER (Cokie907@yahoo.com) on Monday, May 25, 2009 12:59:21 PM
Folks, I'd love to write an entry today for Memorial Day but frankly, I'm just too damn depressed. Do you even need to ask why? Let's just call it the long national nightmare we embarked upon last January. I'm at the end of my rope with this guy and truly feel as if America is in its dying days.
Enjoy a post I made ONE YEAR ago for Memorial Day. Perhaps I'll re-read it and inspire myself out of this dangerous funk.
A fallen sailor...inches from my feet
by the INFORMER May 25, 2008
Today, on the 20th anniversary of my graduation from Annapolis, I stood inches above P02 Christopher Watts' deceased body at the Cedar Grove Baptist Church Cemetery in Seymour, TN and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was insignificant, next to a true American hero. Petty Officer Watts was killed by a USS Cole-style attack in April 2004 and I decided that it would be appropriate for me to visit his grave-site to pay my respects and leave a few mementos this Memorial Day weekend.
When I pulled up to the cemetery, I had to hold back tears as the emotion of being in the presence of a deceased war veteran took hold of me. At first, I thought it was silly to react this way since the individual was a stranger but then it occurred to me that he could have been any one of the enlisted men in my division aboard the USS Valdez (FF-1096). Once it became personal, the emotion really kicked in.
And that's the lesson from this story. It's easy for each one of us to divorce ourselves from the War on Islamo-Fascism so long as we keep it from being personal. So long as nobody we know or feel a connection with, gets killed, we can remain oblivious. But that false sense of security won't work because eventually, if Islamo-Fascism isn't vanquished, someone we know and love will end up getting killed. Just ask the 9/11 families, who felt no connection to the victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, if they realized at the time how far Islamic extremism would impact American society. I remember reading a memorial flyer for Steven Wentworth, a young Marine from my high school in Southwick, MA who was killed in those attacks and thinking it was an isolated incident that would never reach our shores. How silly of me, a naive 17 year old at the time. I wish I could have had the foresight to scream from the rooftops: "Radical Islam is on the move and it will strike NY City in 18 years!!!"
Islamic extremism has reached our shores and it will reach again if we let it! We cannot allow fine patriots like PO2 Christopher Watts or LCpl Steven Wentworth to have died in vain for that would be the ultimate tragedy. These men gave their lives in the defense of freedom so that we may live our lives in a manner that is for the most part, carefree.
I left a note at Petty Officer Watts' grave today for his family that read the following:
Thank-you!
-to the American soldier who defends my freedom at any cost.
-to the parents who fed you, clothed you and taught you values.
-to God for letting me live in the United States of America.
God Bless the sailor under this hallowed ground. We owe him a debt which can never be fully repaid.