Reflection by our society.

Update: The sto­ry got cred­it­ed to Gen­er­al Petraeus instead to Mr. Nick Palmis­ciano.  Regard­less, very good points.

 

His sta­tis­tics are accu­rate and revealing…….as well as his insight on the effects on those who have borne and are bear­ing the sacrifices…….

Nick Palmis­ciano, CEO of Ranger Up, for­mer Army Cap­tain, 1998 grad­u­ate of West Point, and Duke MBA  Gen­er­al Petraeus’s remarks require much reflec­tion by our society.

Thanks to my fel­low veterans:

I remem­ber the day I found out I got into West Point. My mom actu­al­ly showed up in the hall­way of my high school and wait­ed for me to get out of class. She was bawl­ing her eyes out and apol­o­giz­ing that she had opened up my admis­sion let­ter. She was­n’t cry­ing because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was cry­ing because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I want­ed to attend, and how much I want­ed to be an infantry offi­cer. I was going to get that oppor­tu­ni­ty. That same day two of my teach­ers took me aside and essen­tial­ly told me The following:

“David, you’re a smart guy. You don’t have to join the mil­i­tary. You should go to col­lege, instead.”

I could eas­i­ly write a theme defend­ing West­Point and the mil­i­tary as I did that day, explain­ing that USMA is an elite insti­tu­tion, that sep­a­rate from that it is actu­al­ly sta­tis­ti­cal­ly much hard­er to enlist in the mil­i­tary than it is to get admit­ted to col­lege, that serv­ing the nation is a chal­lenge that all able-bod­ied men should at least con­sid­er for a host of rea­sons, but I won’t.

What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attend­ing West Point is going to be bad for his future then there is a dan­ger­ous dis­con­nect in Amer­i­ca, and entire­ly too many Amer­i­cans have no idea what kind of bur­dens our mil­i­tary is bearing.

In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four (4) years. Dur­ing the Viet­nam era, 4.3% served in twelve (12) years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of our pop­u­la­tion has served in the Glob­al War on Ter­ror. These are unbe­liev­able sta­tis­tics. Over­time, few­er and few­er peo­ple have shoul­dered more and more of the bur­den and it is only get­ting worse. Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Con­gress con­sist­ing of 10% vet­er­ans with only one per­son hav­ing a child in the mil­i­tary. Tax­es did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not reg­u­lat­ed. In fact, the aver­age cit­i­zen was asked to sac­ri­fice noth­ing, and has sac­ri­ficed noth­ing unless they have cho­sen to out of the good­ness of their hearts. The only peo­ple who have sac­ri­ficed are the vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies. The vol­un­teers. The peo­ple who swore an oath to defend this nation.

You stand there, deploy­ment after deploy­ment and fight on. You’ve lost rela­tion­ships, spent years of your lives in extreme con­di­tions, years apart from kids you’ll nev­er get back, and beat­en your body in a way that even pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes don’t under­stand. Then you come home to a nation that does­n’t under­stand. They don’t under­stand suffering.

They don’t under­stand sac­ri­fice. They don’t under­stand why we fight for them. They don’t under­stand that bad peo­ple exist. They look at you like you’re a machine — like some­thing is wrong with you. You are the mis­guid­ed one — not them.

When you get out, you sit in the col­lege class­rooms with polit­i­cal sci­ence teach­ers that dis­count your opin­ions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can’t under­stand the macro issues they gath­ered from books, because of your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the vio­lent strain at that. Your Con­gress is debat­ing your ben­e­fits, your retire­ment, and your pay, while they ask you to do more. But the amaz­ing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your coun­try will nev­er pay back what you’ve giv­en up.

You know that the pop­u­lace at large will nev­er tru­ly under­stand or appre­ci­ate what you have done for them. Hell, you know that in some cir­cles, you will be thought as less than nor­mal for hav­ing worn the uniform

Just that deci­sion alone makes you part of an elite group. “Nev­er in the field of human con­flict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” ‑Win­ston Churchill- Thank you to the 11.2% and 4.3% who have served and thanks to the 0.45% who con­tin­ue to serve our Nation.