Comment
A Heartfelt Thanks to Our Veterans
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
From
the Chattanooga Times Free Press
6-29-01
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I was a small child. Almost
suddenly some of the "big guys" in the community went off to war. Some
did not return. It was my first introduction to the truth that freedom has a
huge price tag. As the Fourth of July enters my consciousness, I want to bow my
heart in gratitude to all those who gave this country its birth and those who
have gone off to hellholes all over the globe to choke down bloodthirsty creeps
like Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, Stalin and Hussein.
Imagine what Hitler would have done if he had prevailed. He
and his storm troopers publicly humiliated those he considered inferior, cutting
off their hair in public, rounding them up and beating them, taking their
property, shipping them off in boxcars packed and stacked like sardines to be
abused, gassed and cremated. To personalize that for you, if he had prevailed
there's a good chance you would have been next when he finished with the Jews,
gypsies, cripples, old, infirm and the mentally ill. Something about you would
have displeased him and to displease a man with total power is to die.
It's the way the mind of a maniac works. If he couldn't let
Jews live, what do you think he would have done to Africans and Orientals? He
was a nominal Catholic. How long do you think he would have tolerated
Protestants? If he had to kill German cripples, what do you think he would have
done to Americans on disability? There is no question at all. The gas chambers
and crematoria would have become a permanent part of this world.
We are horrified right now by a Houston mother who drowned her
five children in a bathtub. Imagine a man who could kill a million children
after the worst debasement, humiliation and heartbreak his mind could concoct.
Oh, what a debt we owe to those who stopped him.
If you see prayer as the purest whisper of the human heart,
there is no doubt that billions of human beings constantly pray for an end to
war. But the reality is that there have always been extremely warped beings
among us.
Whether they manifest as Ted Bundys, John Wayne Gacys or
Hitlers, they must be identified and eliminated or not one among us can live a
life worth living.
Once I was asked to welcome a large veteran's group assembled
in Chattanooga for a big convention. The emcee thanked me for taking time from
my busy schedule to welcome them. I thought it was strange to be thanked for
something I considered to be an honor.
My response was, "I want to thank you for taking time
from your busy schedules to go off to fight for me. For leaving your wives and
parents and jobs and communities for long and hard years to go stop those who
would have killed or enslaved us. I want to thank you for crawling through
jungles never knowing when a sniper might take you out. I want to thank you for
running across minefields knowing at any moment your legs could be blown off. I
want to thank you for sloshing onto foreign shores knowing you would face
murderous machine gun fire. I want to thank you for sitting in submarines on the
ocean floor knowing one depth charge could entomb you there. I want to thank you
for parachuting behind enemy lines, never knowing whether or not you would be
alive when you hit the ground.
No, ladies and gentlemen, the time I am taking from my busy schedule to come here to welcome you suddenly pales into complete insignificance. The time you took to do the most treacherous work of all, to risk life and limb for me and my loved ones, now that is something worthy of the deepest gratitude of the human heart."