Iwo Jima Marines: is still showing today’s “youth voters” what real patriotism means

The Collins Report ^ | February 19, 2010 | Kevin “Coach” Collins

[jmaroneps37]

In the summer of 1965 Marine Corps Boot camp training included the boast “If it weren’t for the Marine Corps you’d be speaking Japanese.” It was true then and it is still true today.

Sixty five years ago waves and waves of eighteen and nineteen year old Marines, waded ashore Iwo Jima to defeat the Japanese and win the war in the Pacific on American terms. They fought to keep us from being the slaves of the Japanese and being forced to end up “speaking Japanese.”

By mid February 1945 Franklin Roosevelt knew Americans were running out of patience and money for the war against a country thousands of miles away and on its last legs anyway.

Some thought we should make peace with the Japanese and cut our losses. The only resource America had left was a Marine Corps largely filled with tough determined teenagers.

They were leaders in their communities. They were from big cities and tiny towns. They were a generation of Americans that understood it had to “put aside childish ways” man-up and fight. They were ordinary men who had to face a great challenge and win because they were all America had left.

Today those young Marines are grandfathers, but they are still standing up to defend American freedoms. Unlike their foolish grandchildren who voted for Barack Obama the men who hit the beach that day don’t support Obama and never have.

At nineteen they were wiser than most of their grandchildren ever will be. They didn’t act on emotion; they had no time for anything but reality. Their hope and change was hoping to go home alive without whining.

If you meet a Marine Iwo Jima veteran, greet him with a grateful smile. Because of him and so many others you don’t “speak Japanese.”

[jmaroneps37]

Semper Fi and Oorah Marines, today is a great day in our history.

[gunnyg]

SEE ALSO:
LEST WE FORGET…

http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/flagwtc.html

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A man from my Iowa home town recently passed. He had been an ordinary school teacher before finding himself a Marine Captain at Iwo. I met one other Iwo vet in Tulsa a few years ago. Amazingly, his background was a school teacher/Marine Captain.

[SWEETSUNNYSOUTH]

Thanks for posting this reminder. Our prayers for the Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq who are under constant observation to make sure they don’t violate any rules of engagement.

[GailA]

My Dad was Army Airborne...put the US flag back up on Corregidor when MacArthur retook "The Rock". There is a photo of it on Corrregidor.org. My late husband's uncle Ralph again Army was part of the original band of Merrill's Marauders. Thank GOD for our courageous men and women in the US Military, what ever branch they serve in.

And this is how the government 'keeps' their promises to our retired Military.

TRI CARE FOR LIFE This from a google search:

http://economicspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/05/tricare-for-life-is-obama-trying-to.html

This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medicare cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enrollees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year.)

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9925/12-18-HealthOptions.pdf

http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/hcva09/hcva110609-1.htm

Bill Would Restrict Veterans’ Health Care Options 11/06/09

Buyer and McKeon Offer Amendments to Protect Veterans and TRICARE Beneficiaries

Congress plans to block Tricare fee increases
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w

By Rick Maze - Staff writer, Oct 7, 2009

Tricare fee increases imposed last week by the Defense Department will be repealed by a provision of the compromise 2010 defense authorization bill unveiled Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators.

Snip

The fee increases were announced on Sept. 30 and took effect on Oct. 1, but the defense bill, HR 2647, includes a provision barring any fee increases until the start of fiscal 2011.

Snip

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, said the announcement of fee increases was shocking considering that the Obama administration promised earlier this year to hold off on any new fee Tricare fee increases until fiscal 2011.

“President Obama and DoD assured NAUS and the entire military family earlier this year that there would rightly be no increases in any Tricare fees” in fiscal 2010, Matz said. “We took them at their word, and I can’t believe that a co-pay increase like this was allowed to go forward,” he added.