“Our nation can not go to war unless we take main street, the hair dresser, the assistant principal, the insurance salesman and the guy at the gas station. They have to go to war to find out what we’re doing is just and go back and tell America that what we’re doing is right, giving people freedom.” -Vice Admiral John Cotton, Chief of the Navy Reserve. Full story
Like so many things in our country, the status of the reservist has changed since 9/11. Our spouses who serve are no longer seen as secondary choices; they are being used just as often as active. In fact, just recently, I learned from our family debriefing that my husband’s reserve center is no longer being called that – instead, it’s an operational service center.
Evidence is strongly pointing to the fact that our reservists and National Guardsmen are making a huge impact in Iraq and elsewhere around the world, utilizing the skills that so many of them apply in their civilian jobs to work for the military’s uses. While my husband was in Iraq, he told me about a bridge that insurgents had blown up three times, and our military would go right back and build again. This was a bridge not for our military’s benefit, but for the Iraqi people. What evil desires to tear down and destroy, good will always put back right. That bridge is a visual metaphor for the bigger story of what we’re trying to do there. What our fellow Americans are trying to do.
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