Semper Fi!

Blackfive links to Lieutenant General John Kelly’s tribute to the Marines, a tribute made more moving if one knows that Gen. Kelly’s son had died in combat a mere four days before his father gave that speech.  General Kelly’s speech culminates with a moving description of the last seconds in the lives of Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter who, without fear or hesitation, stood down a suicide bomb truck, saving 50 lives in the process.  We know precisely how they responded because, by happenstance, a video camera caught their last moments on earth. Each won the Navy Cross posthumously (although I think they could equally well have been candidates for the Medal of Honor).

On my “real” facebook, I put up a link to Gen. Kelly’s speech.  My facebook friends ignored it entirely.  Some, I’m sure, never saw it.  But some, the ones who comment routinely on my posts, were strangely silent.

My suspicion is that liberals don’t know what to do with this kind of story. It makes them uncomfortable, I think. For them, their whole relationship with the military is a bit like stealing: they refuse to pay emotionally for the military (meaning they deny it their support and admiration), but they still enjoy the benefits the military confers on America (namely, freedom).