I haven’t felt any desire to blog about sports this week. Even though the Sooners will now be hosting Tulane in the season opener on Saturday. With Louisiana under water and with Lake Tahoe on fire it all kind of feels overwhelming. Beyond surreal.
I feel very subdued from a human standpoint.
Maybe it’s just the fact I’m getting old. Those thirteen young people dying as they did is haunting. They were thirteen young people doing the right thing for the right reason even though it was an extremely difficult task.
One of my customers is a Marine mom in Edmond. She has two Marine sons who have each served multiple tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. One of her sons was at her place on Sunday while I was working there. I knew about him from his mom and went up to him and told him how much old people like me appreciate his service to our country.
I asked him, “By chance did you know any of the fallen thirteen?”
His eyes teared up a little. Just an All-American kid in every regard. Everything was ‘no sir’ or ‘yes sir’.
“Yes, sir…I did. The thirty-one year old officer from Utah was my officer in training camp. Just a great guy. Two young kids and a wife.”
You could see the hurt in his eyes.
How do you respond to that?
So…I hope if I post this video from The Outpost by Jake Tapper you at the least take the time to read the epilogue of the book if nothing else about these incredibly brave Americans who served at Camp Keating and were the inspiration for this book.
I’m such an odd political person. I voted for Obama twice, actually voted for John Anderson the Independent in 1980…and yet I love this video from Ronald Reagan on what it means To Be An American. I know some will sigh and say this was over thirty years ago, but in my opinion this is what we’ve lost as a country in these past thirty years or so.
That being, regardless of political leaning being able to view issues from the prism of being an American first.
I just love this video. Such innocence back then after the fall of the Soviet Union and the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall.
Thr Brits, the Soviets, and now the Americans have all failed in Afghanistan.
What should that tell us from a history standpoint?