It is not everyday that I agree or even link to, or in this case, fawn over a story that is done by the National Review.
But this, is an exception……
Byron York just did an excellent story on a Marine who gave John McCain his purple heart.
"I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart," Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a few minutes after McCain finished a speech at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday. "I said, ‘I want to give this to you, sir, as a reminder that we want you to keep your promise to bring us home in victory and honor, so it will mean something.’"
"We fought over there, and we want it to mean something," Eubanks continued. "We don’t want to come back and it just be all for nothing."
Eubanks, 22 years old, knows as much about the war as anyone. On October 3, 2005, he was in a Humvee on patrol near the Syrian border when an IED went off. "I was thrown from the vehicle, took some shrapnel, landed on my spine and mashed it up a little bit," Eubanks told me in a remarkably good-humored way. He was injured much more than just a little; it took him eleven months to recover. And then — then he volunteered to go back. In August 2007, he was hurt again in a strangely similar way. "Hit by a mortar, thrown from a vehicle — the same situation," Eubanks told me. Now, he’s teaching recruits at Marine Corps Base Quantico — and walking with a cane.
Steve over at Wizbang, chimes in on this, in a way, that I never could ever match:
Unlike The Message(TM) fed to us at every turn, we are not a nation of community organizers, bitter malcontents or hyper-intellectuals or even ‘education reformers’ rubbing ideological elbows with Hugo Chavez.
We are a nation of quiet doers, not just loud mouthed gripers.
We, America, remain as we always have been – a Nation of Sergeants; a people who fight with grit, think with clarity, enter each day with determined work ethic, and love with intensity. And our love of country – for what it is, not simply some farcical vision of what it could be or should have been – is no more blind or rote than our love of family.
And it is just as fierce.
We are a Nation of Sergeants. Thank you, Sgt. Eubanks, for your service, your sacrifice, and for your reminder. Semper Fi, Marine.
To that, I simply add, a solemn; Amen.
This, is why I could never vote Democrat come November 4, 2008. The Democratic Party just does not give flying flip about our Military. Barack Hussein Obama has never served a damned day in our Nation’s Military. He just does not fucking get it it at all. Yes, I do realize that our going into Iraq was a tragic mistake, caused by a incompetent and possibly lazy intelligence department. But for this Nation to pull itself out of a situation that we created ourselves; would be the greatest strategic blunder, since the United States of America’s withdrawal from Vietnam.
If we quit, before it’s time. All those that we lost, will have been lost; for nothing.
Others: The Corner and Babalu Blog