The Daily Brief

Varifrank has another excellent post, where General McAuliffe (he of “Nuts!” fame) comes back to life and gives a press conference about Iraq. My particular fave section of it goes like this (italics are McAuliffe):

You people talk about the resolve of the “insurgents” but you never talk about the resolve of the people who have come across the globe for no other purpose than to free other men from tyranny. By your actions you have done more to empower the enemy than any of the madmen that have been fighting us. You shower then in glory when you should be shaming them by their actions.

Sir-David-of-NBC decided to try to trip up the General with the tried and true trick of the none too subtle use of the “race card”,

“General, when you talk about “the enemy”, are you referring to Islam?”

He let out a hiss and shook his head. “Son, The enemies that our country has been fighting has always been the same, even when the enemy was our brothers in the confederacy”. “ The Enemy” is the enemy of mankind. “The Enemy” is any person or power who believes that one man is the property of another. “The Enemy” is any person or power who seeks to destroy instead of build, imprison rather than embrace, Starve rather than feed. “ The Enemy” from my time wore different uniforms and came from a different places than yours, but they were the same. “The Enemy” you fight today are no different than the men who met me with the demands of surrender in a farmhouse in Bastone. The men who marched a generation into camps and killed them en masse are still here today. The difference is, in my day, we were appalled and disgusted. In your day, so long as its not Americans doing it, you ignore it. Pol Pot kills 7 million people, you said nothing, Rwanda, Iraq, Darfur the list goes on and yet, because America is not the force that caused it, you excuse it. Frankly, some of you even defend it.

Son, if you and yours in this room continue to give these people the mantle of legitimacy, then the men under my command who died back there in Bastone will have died in vain. The war against the enemy of mankind didn’t end in Berlin or Tokyo or Seoul, that war goes on today. That war is being fought by men and women every bit as brave as the men who I served with in the past.

My favorite retired USAF reservist, Baldilocks, points to a post by Varifrank, wherein he waxes eloquent regarding US relief efforts for the tsunami survivors.

Juliette quoted this portion (below) of Varifrank’s post, which made me curious to read the rest of it. The excerpt is more powerful when you read the entire post. The speaker is a Hindi man, who lost family in the disaster. He was responding to someone else’s sneering comment about the US military aid. Apparently the sarcastic commenter saw no value in sending an aircraft carrier. Varifrank set them straight, and then his friend spoke up:

"Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute?
There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com
has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the
world, why can’t you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont
have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you
should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them
would have done so. I’m ashamed of you all…"

Baldilocks did a milblog roundup, and as I was surfing her links today, I ran across this post that moved me to tears (y’all may have figured out by now that I’m easily moved, but this one is really special.) You need to scroll down a couple to find it. It’s called “The Heart of an American.”

This particular post is about a little guardian angel for a convoy of Humvees. She had recently been given a Beanie Baby ™ by a Marine, and she was clutching it to her chest while she sat in the middle of the street, forcing the Hummers to drive around her. Go read the story, folks. It’s well worth your time.

And it’s a good time to remind you that we, too, can be angels to someone else. ‘Tis the season, after all. Box up those toys and school supplies, and ship them off to a number of grass-roots organizations that will pass them on to the Iraqi children.

The two I’m most familiar with are Chief Wiggles’ Operation Give (currently receiving free shipping from FEDEX), and Sgt Hook’s Operation ShoeFly. Operation Give goes to Iraq, while ShoeFly gives to Afghanistan. There are others out there, I know.

Feel free to add the ones you know about in the comments section, and I’ll consolidate them into one post either tomorrow or Thursday.