Posted on 10/10/2016 2:56:15 PM PDT by BBell
Levi Shirley wanted nothing more than to be a Marine. In high school, he taught an informal class on Marine Corps history at the recruiting office a few miles from his house and worked out with the men posted there.
His mother Susan was less excited. Her ex-husband did three combat tours in Vietnam that still haunted him. She didn’t want that for Levi.
At 23, he certainly looked like a Marine: 6 foot 5, rangy with thick brown hair. The problem was his eyesight. Susan put $4,500 on a credit card — many weeks pay at the glass factory where she worked — for Lasik surgery.
His eyesight improved, but not enough, and the Marines still rejected him.
Levi had always been a good kid, a decent student and an inveterate wiseguy. He looked out for special-needs children in school. He adored his little sister Katy. When his mother was sick, he’d place a warm cloth on her forehead.
Now he seemed adrift, uninterested in college and unsure what to do with his life. Susan hated seeing him so disappointed.
One evening as Susan was making dinner, Levi wandered into the kitchen. He had been reading Facebook posts about Islamic State and the Kurdish rebels who had been battling the group in northern Syria.
He had a plan now. “I’m joining a militia to fight ISIS,” he announced.
The outfit he wanted to sign up with was called the YPG, which in Kurdish stood for People’s Protection Units. It was loosely allied with the Kurdish fighters supported by the U.S. in the region, and its commanders eagerly welcomed foreign fighters. A number of young American and Europeans had been joining their ranks, boarding planes for remote battlefields in the Middle East.
“Are you crazy?” Susan asked him.
“Have you really thought
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The Military is being very picky these days. They want the most perfect people they can get.
Lasik and radial keratotomy are verrrryy different surgeries. R.K. involves multiple cuts into the cornea and can severely weaken it. In Lasik, a thin layer of the top the cornea is taken off and the rest is reshaped with a laser. No where near as invasive as R.K.
I don’t know about R.K. but I’m pretty sure that eyesight can disqualify you from being an Air Force pilot and they won’t allow lasik (or at least they didn’t in the past.)
The Navy will (or did) allow their pilots to have had lasik.
As is the one that followed (long read). Two kinds of enemies, using two different means (lawyers would be interested), both with the intent to destroy in two different ways, both possessed by the devil.
Was he from Arizona?
I hear that state is doing the job that the border patrol won’t do.
They're tribals with 21st century weapons.
That, plus maimed, hormally-incoherent transsexuals
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