First off, thanks for your service.Unocat wrote: Agree whole heartedly!
I did a tour in Afghanistan for our rights, freedoms, and to fight back against those that would take them away. I am very surprised at this forum in general, I am new, but I thought I was joining a place where people were interested in advancing our rights as enumerated in our countries founding. However I see a lot of CC only people griefing people who are interested in OC. It is always an interesting human dynamic, that not matter how much alike a group is they always find a way to divide over some issue. It saddens me.
If I may, here's a slightly different way to look at what you've posted above...... I did two tours in Vietnam, whenever we got back to a rear area we would usually visit the Red Cross places where they had a TV. There was only one channel and that was Armed forces TV. We would mostly watch old recorded news shows from 'back home' so we could keep up with what was happening.
At the height of the protests back home, we watched weeks old news reports of all the demonstrations. One evening I asked my old and wise platoon sergeant why we were in Vietnam if so many people didn't want us there? His answer was one I've never forgotten.... He said we were there to assure those people the right to a differing opinion, and to demonstrate if they thought that was the way to express their point of view. In other words, freedom at work.
It's no different with the many differing viewpoints expressed here on the forum. While you may not agree with some points of view, you served our country honorably to preserve those differing opinions.... even those vastly different from yours.
I certainly don't agree with everything I read here, and I was totally against folks walking around with AR's and AK's trying to push their point of view, but I am not saddened by it...... I am reminded that we are all very lucky to be living in a country where freedom works, even when being expressed differently than we believe.