I was minding my own business, not bothering anyone, when the little bell went "ding" and I saw that a new e-mail had come in. When I checked it out I found that my father in law had sent me a missive. While some might welcome such an e-gram it is of itself something of a surprise as my FIL is deeply afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome compounded by periodic attacks of Socialistitis and suffers from bouts of Consumptive Greenies's Disease.
In short, he knows damned good and well not to try to lay his one world, kumbayah, the government is eeeeee-vil drivel on me and not expect a rhetorical pasting in return. But I also notice that he copied most of the family, as well as his cadre of leftist poltical cronies. Fearing the worst I opened the item.
Inside was nothing but a link... this one in fact. I'd seen it before, but not in a while.
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Since my FIL had not provided any context for the link I had to wonder what he was up to this time. So I consumed about five minutes worth of oxygen and tapped out the following reply to him.
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George Orwell once wrote...
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
He was writing about policemen at the time, but the same could be said of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who volunteer to serve today. And in many ways Orwell was writing about me. Of course it was also Orwell who wrote...
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."
I have no idea what your thinking is on the content of the article, or your intent, since all you did was link it. Maybe you're trying to stir up a discussion... or a pot? As I recall you are stridently opposed to the current phase of the war on terror. All that aside, what is written above pretty much summarizes my thinking. I am at my core a peaceable man who despises both violence and war. It was Robert E. Lee, after all, who once said that it was good that war is such a terrible thing as otherwise we might come to love it.
But I am also a realist who understands that there are times when violence and war are both necessary and vital. When those necessary times are forced upon us, we have to be prepared to fight and not stop fighting until the fight is finished. If that pigeonholes me as "the warrior" or makes me somehow a bad guy, then so be it.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I so admire the four varieties of Belgian Sheepdog and currently own two of them. Belgians are incredibly smart, agile, loyal and loving. They will do anything they are asked to do, and do it well. But at their core, like me, they are warriors with the heart of a lion and a tenacity that is unequalled by any but a few other breeds.
To further illustrate my point, and get back to the premise of sheep, wolves and sheepdogs, there is an old story from World War Two, perhaps apocryphal, of a patrol of soldiers that came across a flock of sheep peacefully grazing in a meadow. They were struck by such a serene and pastoral setting in the middle of combat operations. Then they noticed a group of wolves on the far side of the pasture closing in on the flock. The soldiers couldn't fire on the wolves as it would give away their position so they watched as the wolves began to make their attack. But then, from out of the middle of the flock they saw a group of Belgian Sheepdogs appear. The dogs had been protecting the flock from within, not betraying their strengths or weaknesses.
Several of the dogs went out to battle the intruders, while a couple hung back to tend the flock. As the battle continued and the dogs in he fray became tired or injured they would circle back to the flock and their place would taken by one of the dogs that stayed with the flock. The fight lasted for an hour or more as the dogs each took turns fighting, covering and recovering.
In the end, not a sheep was lost.
Not everyone can be a warrior, or should be, but those of us who are understand that. And it is why we do what we do.
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Mrs. BigDog, who long ago tired of her father's abusive politics and debating style told me I did good. She also told me that she had sent him that link a number of months ago as he was copied on a response the my lovely bride sent to one of his cronies who lives overseas and loathes the United States and everything about it.
At the time the overseas croney was having a back and forth Blame Bush Pity Party by e-mailand complaining about everything that America does, again based on something my FIL started, even though she hasn't lived here in 25 years. Mrs. BigDog sent her the linked article as a testament of what the real world is all about.
It must have worked as she never replied.
And it's a really funny thing but since I sent him the mail above, he hasn't replied either.
