Here is a story I’m pretty sure the media is either going to sweep under the rug immediately or highlight as a real-life Saving Private Ryan type story. If they highlight it, they will focus on the family’s loss, not on the family’s continued support of the war in Iraq. Interesting, sad, patriotic. As a fellow soldier and a younger brother myself, I feel for this family. Its horribly sad situation to contemplate.
At the same time I feel sad, I have huge respect for these brothers’ choice to enlist after their first brother was killed in Iraq and I’m very proud this family is American. Manly men doing man things. As I mentioned in the article yesterday about the Virginia Tech shootings, we all have to die someday anyway and at least these guys chose to die while doing something, not hacking their last feeble breaths out in a hospital somewhere at the end of inactive days, having avoided what their heart told them was right their whole lives.
I respect people who become proactive, who seek to become what the world meant them to be. Those who feel their calling is to be a soldier, a police officer, a corporate executive, a doctor, whatever all have huge responsibilities to bear, huge headaches and some of these professions expose the person to personal danger. When someone accepts those dangers because they feel they are making a difference, doing the right thing and answering the whispers in the wind of their own hearts the danger is no longer an issue, and a death doing what you believe in is a thousand times more graceful and well deserved than a death at the end of a life of hiding and cowardice.