My wife and I just got back from Washington DC, Memorial Day. We attended the 20th Anniversary of Rolling Thunder. That's the annual motorcycle event honoring POW's and MIA's from the Vietnam Era. That's the guys our government left behind. Unbelievable! The Park Service announced there were between 275,000 and 300,000 motorcycles riding up Constitution Avenue, past the Capitol and back down the other side to the Wall. You know the Wall, the one with over 58,000 names of those killed in Vietnam.
We went on the invitation of my old Gunny from Nam. He trained us as snipers in 1966. It turns out he is one of the founders of this great event. So me and a couple of my sniper team had a reunion of sorts with us and about a million other people who made the trek to DC. It was something, riding up front with the Gunny. It was even more so seeing the hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets in support of the effort.
While I was there I met a young Marine, a sniper no less. I was a sniper and served two consecutive years in the Vietnam War. So this guy was one of my own. Get this ... 25 years old and home from his fourth, countem', four seven month tours in Iraq. A Marine, a sniper, lots of combat. I wish everyone could meet him and hear what I heard. What an honor for me to listen to this guy make more sense than our President.
He says to me, "What's wrong with the American People?" Now that's a good question. He says, "They're up the street there on Capitol Hill wasting time talking about how long we'll have to stay in Iraq. Hell, we're still in Korea, Japan and Germany. What's wrong with us?" He's got one heckuva' point. What is wrong with us? I guess other than being the spoiled brats of the world.
You see we have the luxury in this country to debate crap like that. We debate gay rights, animal rights, environmental rights, you name it. All while people are starving everywhere, even in our country. Forget your politics for a minute. I'm a Marine and before you write me off to be some right wing war monger, I'm not. I didn't think we should go to Iraq. Saddam was already a paper tiger. But you know what, we did. We did! And 99.5% of the bozos in DC we elected voted to go to war.
So where does that leave us? We removed a horrible Dictator. We established a presence next to Iran's Abinnanutjob. We screwed up the prosecution of the war because there are more Chief's than in any war and way too few Indians to fight it. What you don't see on TV is that in the 'Green Zone', the safe part of Baghdad, they have Starbucks and 31 Flavors while the guys on the outside get blown to bits. We have more lawyers over there 'advising' than we do medics. I met a CIA fellow home for a month from Iraq who told me that he couldn't count the pages in his Rules of Engagement Manual. He said it is far easier to arrest someone for DUI than it is to detain a terrorist. What is wrong with the American People?
And now we have Congress debating publicly exactly when we should leave a war. For Gods sake this isn't a picnic we're talking about. Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam? Every single Iraqi who ever supported us is dead if we pullout. It's that simple. My 25 year old Sergeant friend knows it. Why don't we? Where is our illustrious media? Why aren't they informing the American people what happened on the fall of Saigon? Or maybe it's not politically correct to paint the North Vietnamese to be the murderers they really were. At a cookout while in DC I met a Vietnamese woman who was rescued as a child escaping after the fall of Saigon. Her father was just released from a 'reeducation camp' three years ago. He served nearly 30 years. His crime? He was a South Vietnamese Army Officer. The fate of the Iraqi's will be far worse given the enemy over there.
I talk about and teach change to businesses across America. So to the masses I say, its time for a change. Forget Republican and Democrat ... that's what got us into this mess. We have to stop putting up with the never ending talk in Washington. Let's let them know its time for a change. Write your Congressman and Senators, email them; crash their inboxes. What is wrong with America? We're asleep at the wheel.
It's been said that evil conquers when good men do nothing. We live in a time when the news covers more of Paris Hilton going to jail, poor thing, than digging up the do nothing officials we have spending our money in Washington. You have moron's out there who have made the Marine humvee's so heavy with armor that our Recon teams have to carry scuba gear in case end up in the river they can suck air while they set a charge to blow their 500 pound doors open - under water!
I'm not for war and I'm not for the Iraq War. But you know what, we started it, so lets let these kids end it. If you go to war then let them fight. I heard stories from some Army guys who couldn't put up concertina wire around their night positions in the streets because it would look 'too aggressive'. It's a shame. These kids are fired up to help democracy prevail, let's finish what we started or we'll have choppers on the rooftops all over again. It'll be welcome to Saigon 1975 for the good people of Iraq. Don't sit back and let it happen again. Wake up and smell the cordite from the battles a half a world away. The time is now!
Ed Kugler
Ed Kugler has been living change since the jungles of Vietnam where he was a Marine Sniper for two-years in the Vietnam War. He came home to a country he hadn't left and began work as a mechanic and truck driver. Since then he has worked his way into the executive suite of Frito Lay, Pepsi Cola and Compaq Computer where he was Vice President of Worldwide Logistics. He is the author of Dead Center - A Marine Sniper's Two Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War and many others. He makes change happen. http://www.nomorebs.com
