[rlmorel]

"...At a remote outpost in Afghanistan, I listened one evening to a 37-year-old enlisted soldier on guard duty. He talked softly about a misspent youth, about finding his true "family'' in the Army. He said he was proud to have learned to survive and excel in this environment. He said he would without hesitation take a bullet to save a buddy and that any of them would do the same for him. He said "love'' was not too strong a word to use to describe the responsibility and gratitude he felt in this relationship to his squad and platoon..."

Something that most of those of us who have never served in that capacity have a hard time understanding. I get it, but I will bet there are many out there who don't, the vast majority of them liberals.

[SMARTY]

I thought of that, too. However, the US Congress in its eternal love-hate relationship with the Military (mostly HATE), will NEVER permit our Military to operate at its full effectiveness... ever. So the idea of a Military acting independently from political interference (apart from the CIC directives) is unlikely.

[FreedomPoster]

That idea is very much at the fore in E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed, which I finished a week or so ago. This book is *the* definitive account of what it was like to be a front line Marine in the latter half of the Pacific War.