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A Little Too Close
I’ve been reading about the death of Soleimani and quietly thinking that this is a good thing, especially when I read that he was the source of the IEDs that have been such a curse over in that part of the world. I’m also aware of how despotic the whole Iranian regime is, and that there are vast numbers of Iranians who have been killed.
Now, I still think it is positive that this evil person is no longer here on earth to continue his evil deeds, and I also realize that this will probably escalate the tensions in the Middle East, with troops being put on alert. But today at church, I got a serious punch in the gut over it all.
A good friend’s daughter is visiting from McAllen, TX, where her husband works for Border Patrol. I’ve known these “kids” for a long time. I went to their wedding reception here in Las Vegas. He was active duty i n the Army and now is in the reserves; they have three adorable children: 11, 8, and 4 years old.
He told us today after church that he isn’t going home to Texas this week. Instead, he is flying out to Georgia this afternoon to join his unit that has been called up to respond to this situation. We just all stood there and hugged him, and some of us cried. Like me. And he isn’t even my son or my husband.
I’m still not sorry that Soleimani is dead. But I’m praying for this awesome young man and his precious family. I’m praying for all the young men and women and their families.
As to Iran’s ability to harm us, Suleimani’s funeral procession carried his body in a Chevrolet truck.
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/01/05/katie-pavlich-has-the-perfect-reaction-to-the-chevrolet-product-placement-at-soleimanis-funeral/
If they can’t make their own vehicles, what can they do ? Even the Soviets had their own cars and good tanks.
Iran, like the Arabs, makes nothing, except of course, suicide bombs and IEDs.
Bring it home cowgirl! Thank you.
You can add my prayers to your own.
Yes, war is hard. War is not fun. The problem is, so long as there are people like the Iranian regime, someone is going to have to stop their aggression.
Our service men and women in Afghanistan are in my prayers daily. They seem to be nearly forgotten (except for families and friends) in that long-lasting and seemingly pointless war.
Like Viet Nam, we need to either decide to win or get out. Currently, our people there are making needless sacrifices — sometimes the ultimate sacrifice.
@cowgirl I’ll share my corner with you. It’s where we pray for those who do what they are called to do.
God can though we humans can’t.
Would the Democrats acted this way if Himmler or Hess would have been vaporized by FDR?
Yes. FDR did little to save the Jews of Europe from the Holocaust.
It had the leak-proof liner they needed.
We had a similar experience at church this am. Several asked if we’d heard from our son, and when we said that he was going on deployment tomorrow, they assumed the events were related, and it caused a similar reaction. But his deployment has been scheduled for a while, and as he told us this afternoon, it isn’t supposed to be a combat deployment. We said that he’ll be about as safe as anyone can be, but that we are concerned about another friends’ son-in-law who is somewhere in Afghanistan for maybe the seventh or eight time. Add our prayers for your friends.
Prayers from us too.
We should have brought the troops home from Afghan ten years ago. That should have been a Special Forces operation only. When Big Army took over, it was lost. Read “Jawbreaker.”
https://www.amazon.com/Jawbreaker-Attack-Personal-Account-Commander-ebook/dp/B000FCKLV6/
Vietnam started as a Special Forces operation and should have stayed that way.
There was a Hollywood movie about assassinating Hitler. That was in the days when Hollywood was patriotic.
The killing of Soleimani doesn’t bother me that much. He was a terrorist who worked for an enemy of the United States in a combat zone that the US has operated in since 2003. What bothers me is that brigades like the 82nd are being deployed without any discussion in Congress or a major argument made to the American people by Trump about the need for this escalation in force. The troops are being deployed using the 2003 AUMF, which while still legally in effect, I do not feel it would be morally right for American Soldiers to be positioned for a new conflict based on an authorization to get rid of Saddam Hussein. These troops look like they are being used as a trip wire in case Iran decides to escalate the situation. Shouldn’t Congress and the American people discuss the situation and the goals before we put Soldiers in possible harms way. I don’t want another Lebanon where Marines were emplaced as a deterrent to escalation only to be pulled out once an attack occurred because the US didn’t actually plan to back up the show of force.
I share your concerns, but am optimistic.
Trump took office as an opponent of expanding the indeterminate placement of large numbers of troops abroad.
Approving of the attack on the Quds leader didn’t by itself nullify that strategy.
But significant, immediate increases of troop deployments, without clear, achievable military objectives that will allow their number to be decreased again once achieved, are worrying.
The risk is that this President will undergo a reversal of his beliefs about military expansion, as initially-“anti-war” leaders tend to do, once they are put in command of a powerful military force. What often happens is a creeping expansion.
I agree with the view of Walter Russell Mead in the WSJ today, that we are protected from that by the fact that Trump always acts in a way that maintains the support of his “base.” They will tolerate neither his backing down from quick reprisals for specific attacks, nor his expansion into interminable bloody foreign conflicts.
He is under immense pressure to expand the presence by the professional military that thrives on expansion. The Army has become a bureaucratic mess similar to other federal agencies. That might have a lot to do with why Trump has been meeting with enlisted.