The recent
assassination of a British soldier walking down a street in England was a
despicable act. He proudly wore his country's uniform and for that he gave his
life.
Most of us
are very proud of our military. We should be. Without our armed forces we would
not be the free country we are today.
America
must keep a strong military. Our sons and daughters put everything on the
line for our country. We should stand strong with them.
We must
keep a strong number of soldiers. We never want the world to look at us with
the perception that we have a weak military. Currently we have a small Navy,
(Russia is on the move building a super Navy) and a small Air Force. The
Army and Marines are tired and stressed out because too few are being
asked to do too much. We need a larger pool of service men and women to do the
work they are being asked to do. We could certainly use some of them just to
protect our own borders.
However, we
must get out of the war business. We do not have to be in an ongoing war.
Congress should always vote and declare war if America is involved in the war.
We then should go in and get the job done. Fighting wars for five and 10
years is too long.
Deployments of
our soldiers are generally too long. Fifteen months is too long. For the sake
of our soldiers and their families we must eliminate 15-month tours. No tour of
duty should ever be longer than 12 months, but I am in favor of a nine-month
tour. Nine months is a long time to be away from family. This would reduce
stress and give our military hope of being able to emotionally survive. Too
many soldiers return back from deployment emotionally shattered to marriages
that are stressed to the max. A nine or six-month tour would be better than a
12-month tour.
Our service men
and women deserve our best support while they are in the service and then we
should help them as they transition back to civilian life. Every service person
should have civilian life boot camp before they are released from the military.
They should leave with a fine-tuned resume featuring their education and skills
they learned while in service. The basics of how to find job openings and
preparing to interview for a job opening should be taught. A plan of how to
return to civilian life and go forward with an active life should be addressed.
This might help keep some of our veterans off the street. It is sad that we
live in a nation where so many of our former service people live on the streets
of America. There are different reasons for this but it should never be because
we did not help transition soldiers back to everyday life. We must take
care of our veterans with continued support for their college education,
health care insurance and benefits that were earned while in service to
our nation.
It is my prayer
that we never have to use our military in another war. I would love to see
our nation never lose another person on the battleground. We should never enter
into any kind of war without the consent of Congress. When we do enter into any
kind of conflict it should be quickly carried out. When we are finished we need
to leave. The long drawn out years of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan should
never have occurred and could have been completed in a shorter time period.
Glenn Mollette is
the author of American Issues: Every American Has An Opinion and nine other
books. He grew up in Martin County, Kentucky, and in 1964 was a child when
President Lyndon B. Johnson visited the county seat of Inez to begin his
campaign on poverty. You can hear him each Sunday night on XM Radio on
channel 131 8 EST. Find him on Facebook. Direct email to [email protected].
Comments 1
I think military fatigues are the best lookin uniforms out there. Not because of how they look physically but because of what they represent. Freedom, liberty, patriotism. I am proud to be an American!