The 9/11 Generation

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On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:32:04 -0700, MG Hank Stelling USAF ret forwarded
Hirsuncty2@aol. com wrote:


The 9/11 Generation Better than the Boomers
by Dean Barnett
The Weekly Standard
07/30/2007, Volume 012, Issue 43

http://weeklystanda rd.com/Content/ Public/Articles/ 000/000/013/ 904pffgs. asp

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone.

Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers--
those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation-- took the
opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of
Woodstock became the face of the Boomers' response to their moment of
challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as
baby-killers added no luster to their image.

Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most
calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled
through the rest of the century. In the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, military
service didn't occur to most young people as an option, let alone a duty.

But now, once again, history is calling. Fortunately, the present generation
appears more reminiscent of their grandparents than their parents.

I've spent much of the past two weeks speaking with young people (and a few
not-so-young) who have made the decision to serve their country by
volunteering for the military. Some of these men have Ivy League
degrees; all of them are talented and intelligent individuals who--contrary to
John Kerry's infamous "botched joke" ("Education, if you make the most of it,
you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can
do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq")--could have chosen to do
anything with their lives. Having signed up, they have either gone to
Iraq or look forward to doing so. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media have
underreported their stories.

One of the excesses of the 1960s that present-day liberals have disowned and
disavowed since 9/11 is the demonization of the American military. While every
now and then an unrepentant liberal like Charlie Rangel will appear on cable
news and casually accuse U.S. troops of engaging in baby-killing in Iraq, the
liberal establishment generally knows better. They "support" the American
military--at least in the abstract, until it does anything resembling fighting
a war.

In search of a new narrative, 21st-century liberals have settled on the
"soldiers are victims" meme. Democratic senators (and the occasional
Republican senator who's facing a tough reelection campaign) routinely
pronounce their concern for our "children" in Iraq. One of the reasons John
Kerry's "botched joke" resonated so strongly was that it fit the liberals'
narrative. The Democratic party would have you believe that our soldiers are
children or, at best, adults with few options: In short, a callous and
mendacious administration has victimized the young, the gullible, and the
hopeless, and stuck them in Iraq.

But this narrative is not just insulting to our fighting men and women, it is
also grossly inaccurate.

Kurt Schlichter is a lieutenant colonel in the California National Guard. A
veteran of the first Gulf war, he's now stateside and commands the 1-18th
Cavalry, 462-man RSTA (Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition)
squadron attached to the 40th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. The last media
representative he spoke with before I contacted him was a New York Times
stringer who wanted Schlichter's help in tracking down guardsmen who were
"having trouble because they got mobilized."

In describing his unit, Schlichter says, "Our mission is to operate far out in
front of the main body of the brigade to find and keep in contact with the
enemy, report on its activities, and call in air or artillery fire on it. We
are very lightly armed--speed, stealth, and smarts are our best weapons--and
our Cav scouts work out of humvees or on foot." Their squadron motto is "Swift
and Deadly."

Colonel Schlichter talks about the soldiers he commands with unvarnished
admiration. He has 20-year-olds serving under him who have earned combat
badges. As to why these young men are willingly and eagerly putting themselves
in harm's way, Schlichter flatly declares, "The direction comes from
themselves. They like to be challenged."

One of the soldiers in Colonel Schlichter's 1-18th is 28-year-old Sergeant
Joseph Moseley. The outline of Moseley's story matches the liberal narrative
of the "soldier victim." A junior college student, he served four years in the
Army and then four years in the National Guard. During his stint in the Guard,
Moseley got mobilized. He went to Iraq, where he had a portion of his calf
muscle torn away by an IED. He has since returned to the United States and is
undergoing a rigorous rehab program, which he describes as "not always going
smoothly." It's virtually impossible that Sergeant Moseley will recover fully
from his injuries.

Yet when asked about his time in Iraq, Moseley speaks with evident pride. He
says the fact that he took the brunt of the IED's blow means he did his job.
None of the men serving under him was seriously injured. When asked how he
would feel about being characterized as a victim, Sergeant Moseley bristles.
"I'm not a victim," he says. "It's insulting. That's what we signed up for. I
knew what I was doing."

Tom Cotton is another soldier who knew what he was doing. When 9/11 occurred,
Cotton was in his third year at Harvard Law School. Like most Americans, he
was "shocked, saddened, and angered." Like many on that day, he made a promise
to serve his country.

And Cotton meant it. After fulfilling the commitments he had already made,
including clerking for a federal judge and going to work for a large
Washington law firm, Cotton enlisted in the Army. He jokes that doing so came
with a healthy six-figure pay cut.

Cotton enlisted for one reason: He wanted to lead men into combat. His
recruiter suggested that he use the talents he had spent seven years
developing at Harvard and join the JAG Corps, the Armed Forces' law firm.
Cotton rejected that idea. He instead began 15 months of training that
culminated with his deployment to Iraq as a 2nd lieutenant platoon leader with
the 101st Airborne in Baghdad.

The platoon he led was composed of men who had already been in Baghdad for
five months. Cotton knew that a new platoon leader normally undergoes a period
of testing from his men. Because his platoon was patrolling "outside the wire"
every day, there was no time for Cotton and his men to have such a spell. He
credits what turned out to be a smooth transition to his platoon's
noncommissioned officers, saying, "The troops really belong to the NCOs."
After six months, Cotton and his platoon redeployed stateside.

While in Iraq, Cotton's platoon was awarded two Purple Hearts, but suffered no
killed in action. His larger unit, however, did suffer a KIA. When I asked
Cotton for his feelings about that soldier's death, the pain in his voice was
evident. After searching for words, he described it as "sad, frustrating,
angry--very hard, very hard on the entire company."

He then added some thoughts. "As painful as it was, the death didn't hurt
morale," he said. "That's something that would have surprised me before I
joined the Army. Everyone in the Infantry has volunteered twice--once for the
Army, once for the Infantry. These are all grown men who all made the decision
to face the enemy on his turf. The least you can do is respect them and what
they're doing."

Now serving in the Army in Virginia, still enjoying his six-figure pay cut,
Tom Cotton says he is "infinitely happy" that he joined the Army and fought in
Iraq. "If I hadn't done it," he says, "I would have regretted it the rest of
my life."

Regardless of their backgrounds, the soldiers I spoke with had a similar
matter-of-fact style. Not only did all of them bristle at the notion of being
labeled victims, they bristled at the idea of being labeled heroes. To a man,
they were doing what they saw as their duty. Their self-assessments lacked the
sense of superiority that politicians of a certain age who once served in the
military often display. The soldiers I spoke with also refused to make
disparaging comparisons between themselves and their generational cohorts who
have taken a different path.

But that doesn't mean the soldiers were unaware of the importance of their
undertaking. About a month ago, I attended the commissioning of a lieutenant
in the Marine Corps. The day before his commissioning, he had graduated from
Harvard. He didn't come from a military family, and it wasn't financial
hardship that drove him into the Armed Forces. Don't tell John Kerry, but he
studied hard in college. After his commissioning, this freshly minted United
States Marine returned to his Harvard dorm room to clean it out.

As he entered the dorm in his full dress uniform, some of his classmates gave
him a spontaneous round of applause. A campus police officer took him aside to
shake his hand. His father observed, "It was like something out of a movie."

A few weeks after his commissioning, the lieutenant sent me an email that read
in part:

I remember when I was down at Quantico two summers ago for the first half of
Officer Candidates School. The second to last day I was down there--"Family
Day," incidentally- -was the 7/7 bombings. The staff pulled us over and told us
the news and then said that's basically why they're so hard on us down there:
We're at war and will be for a long time, and the mothers of recruits at MCRD
and at Parris Island right now are going to be depending on us one day to get
their sons and daughters home alive.

When I was in England last week, I talked to an officer in the Royal Navy who
had just received his Ph.D. He was saying he thought the larger war would last
20-30 years; I've always thought a generation-- mine in particular. Our highest
calling: To defend our way of life and Western Civilization; fight for the
freedom of others; protect our friends, family, and country; and give hope to
a people long without it.

It is surely a measure of how far we've come as a society from the dark days
of the 1960s that things like military service and duty and sacrifice are now
celebrated. Just because Washington and Hollywood haven't noticed this
generational shift doesn't mean it hasn't occurred. It has, and it's
seismic.


"If It Weren't For The United States military"
"There Would Be NO United States of America"
"Home of The Free, Because of the Brave"