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Last night while watching Sixty Minutes , Andy Rooney, who is a WWII vet, pointed out that our forefathers didn't "give" their lives for their country. Their lives were "taken" from them. They were the victims of circumstance, but rose to the occasion, with the result being the preservation of our way of life.
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Without their response and courage, we could be speaking German, and busy purifying the races. We could be in a cultural Dark Age shackled by totalitarian repression. Who knows what our lives would be like.
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In my own case, my grandfather was gassed in the trenches of WWI France, my father spent a year in the hospital after his Coast Guard Ship was sunk in WWII and my father in law survived wounds and prison camp in the Korean War.
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To this day, I always have some guilt for not going to Vietnam, although my father claimed that he would shoot me in the foot to avoid being drafted. Luckily, my draft number was high enough to preclude either alternative.
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I believe that we had a need to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan, although the inability to reach closure in these conflicts is very disturbing. At this point, it is overbearing to hear of the deaths of young Americans over there.
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On the other foot, solgerin" gets all the prine hoors, most often at
a rebate price. Shoo worked that angle, shameless as he were.