More years ago than I'd like to admit, this is who I was. It's a silly pose I struck, but what I had just learned during 13 strenuous weeks of boot camp wasn't silly at all. Although I joined during peacetime, our training was a preparation for war.
I joined the United States Marine Corps when I was a senior in high school. I arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, just after midnight on August 1, 1958, on a Greyhound bus filled with young men who were nervous or in complete denial.
When I joined the military, the Commander-in-Chief was neither a coward nor a moron. My Commander-in-Chief had led the largest military invasion in world history on June 6, 1944, D-Day. And as President of the United States, he didn't plunge us into war; he removed us from one. He truly knew the ramifications of sending young men into combat.
I ache for my young Marine brothers today because their civilian leadership, if it can be called leadership, is probably the worst in the history of our great nation. And our current civilian leadership has the audacity to denigrate the accomplishments of those men and women who have had the courage to serve when the bullets were flying, in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Our current civilian leadership is without courage, without shame, without conscience, without souls.
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