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smokyray(at)rocketmail.co
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 Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:39 am Post subject: 9/11 |
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Guys,
Though not HR2 related, I appreciate the history lesson. Having served much more recently in our current contingencies, 9/11 is a glowing date on my calendar every year. I was awakened at 0600 PST on 9/11/01 in my hotel room by the 737 Captain (a Viet Nam veteran) I flew in the night before. I turned on my TV to witness what would be the second aircraft striking the World Trade center. Three hours later my ANG unit would call to inform me I was activated and needed to get home ASAP. Six days later I was patrolling the east coast in a combat loaded F-16C, defending my own homeland. I would later escort Air Force One to my hometown airport and CAP (combat air patrol) right over the street where I grew up.
Over the next four years our unit would serve three rotations to Iraq supporting special forces and searching for terrorists in the far reaches of the world. The deployments would stretch our abilities, hone our skills and make us closer than any group on the planet. The missions were long and challenging. I have heard young voices over the radio screaming for help at 0300 AM and dropped bombs closer than I could imagine to kids barely old ernough to drive, let alone vote. What's the longest minute you can imagine? The 60 second bomb fall time from when you release to impact with friendlies in contact. I have heard the sad news over the radio when we didn't quite get to the scene fast enough and there were "KIA's" to recover. I have seen the sun go down and come back up on the same long patrol and marveled at how beautiful the sunrise was, even after people we supported didn't live through the night to see it.
When queried about my service and to what end our involvement overseas entails I tell people this. The attack on 9/11 was a premeditated act of terrorism and murder of innocent civilians. It took place in a US city on US soil by a group of twisted individuals who believed it was their right to do so. Therefore I believe in our right to hunt them down and bring them justice, in whatever form that may be. I would return tomorrow if they would let me. Through it all I was thankful to be a US citizen enjoying the freedoms we all share including owning a cool airplane. I am also very proud of our kids serving in very tough circumstances across the globe.
I was even more proud that I could be there for them.
Smokey
HR2
--- On Sun, 9/12/10, Pat Ladd <pj.ladd(at)btinternet.com> wrote:
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From: Pat Ladd <pj.ladd(at)btinternet.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Dresden
To: rocket-list(at)matronics.com
Date: Sunday, September 12, 2010, 4:53 AM
<<Thank you for that reality-check, Pat, perhaps more relevant with the anniversary of 9/11 than at any other time. >>
Thanks for the replies that my intervention has provoked. I would rather have kept this off list but there was no private return address.
Delighted to continue anydiscussion that you like off list
Cheers
Pat
<<Razing museums and killing civilians hoping that the enemy will feel the pain and stop fighting only works if the enemy fears losing its civilians and its cities.>>
I don`t think that anyone, even in 1940, wanted to waste bombs on `museums and civilians`. They got hit because the average bomb aimer couldn`t put a bomb within 5 miles of his target.
<<With today's technology such a scenario is unlikely to occur again since arm-chair pilots sitting in lounge-like settings flying pilotless drones can go in.>>
Thats what they said in 1940. " the B-17 box formation was impregnable". Until the Me 109`s drove head on straight through the formation, broke it up and then picked off the individuals.
"The Norden bombsight will enable us to put a bomb in a barrel from 20,000 ft" This was a bit later on when the Norden sight was introduced but it couldn`t do anything like that in combat conditions. In any case the lead bomb aimer ran the sight and everyone else, spread over 10 miles of sky pickled their bombs when they saw his drop and spread their bombs over ten miles of territory..
<<These are people who swore allegiance to a mythical figure represented by remotely located clerics who have indoctrinated their people to consider the pain of civilian-killings and museum-razing as passports to pie-in-the-sky rewards for being killed.>>
You mean like being taught that there is a God by your local pastor and hoping to go to Heaven when you die? Maybe your local cleric wasn`t so specific about the availability of virgins but the message is pretty much the same. All armies fight in the belief that God is on their side. You have `In God we Trust` The Germans have `Gott mit Uns` on their belt buckles. The `Christian` Crusaders from Britain, France, Germany who, after the seige stood the entire population of Acre, men women and children, in line and killed them all by mace or sword or axe or dagger. It took two days. They all had The Holy Cross emblazoned on their surcoats and banners to `legalise` their actions.
<< such as snake-oil salesmen who can dematerialize and transmit themselves in real time into millions of people's homes at the same instant, assemble themselves again and speak to the nation eye-to-eye in their living rooms. Television, for example>>
Like that Koran burning pastor down in Gainesville for instance.
<<We allowed the enemy into our country when their only distinction was that they were foreigners. And now those powers that keep us safe also prevent us from solving the problem. >>
Dont forget the very extensive pro nazi faction alread in many countries (including the UK) in the 1930.`s. There were many solid citizens, not of foreign antecedents, in both our countries who thought Hitler was the best thing since sliced bread. Many of them changed their minds when the bombs began to fall and yours changed after Ed Murrow. We still interned, in terrible conditions, many loyal people with blameless records just because they had German names or Austrian grandparents. Once that paranoia gets loose where does it stop? Remember the Macarthy witch hunts. Lives ruined for the slimmest, or no reason.
<<It won't be resolved with drones hitting military targets elsewhere. . How's that for bad options on the horizon of choices that will require a decision sooner rather than later. >>
Pretty miserable outlook isn`t it? In the meantime, the sun is shining, there is a blue sky with scattered Cu. at 4000ft. I think I will get the plane out.
Cheers
Pat
From: owner-rocket-list-server(at)matronics.com [mailto:owner-rocket-list-server(at)matronics.com] On Behalf Of Speedy11(at)aol.com
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:11 PM
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pj.ladd(at)btinternet.com
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 11:26 am Post subject: 9/11 |
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It took place in a US city on US soil by a group of twisted individuals >>
Hi Rob,
I think that is the bit to bear in mind, `a group of twisted individuals` NOT Islam in general. Although I agree that it is hard to take when the TV screens show dancing in the streets after 9/11..There is no doubt that many people the world over, although they would not have dreamed of mounting an attack on America or even on an American citizen, secretly felt a a little surge of glee that America was being taken down a peg.
I know that it is unfair, that America has been unstinting in aid in men,money and materials in every emergency and to many people the world over. What America has contributed to the world is incalculable but everyone likes to see the top dog thumped. It was the same when the world was mainly the British Empire. Everyone wanted us out, gone, defeated, no matter what good we had done in stopping local wars, treating disease, introducing law and order, building up a infrastructure to run a country. OUT. OUT. OUT.
We were what you are now. Rich, powerful, arrogant, convinced that that there is only one world, our world because that is the BEST. One way, OUR way.
Nobody loves conquerors, no matter how benign or well intentioned they may be. In spite of all the benefits we hated the Romans, the Normans. The Indians hated us. The French hated us because we occupied their country,
Americans are disliked, hated, pick your word, because you have conquered the world economically and culturally. I dislike you because the kids wear Nikes and there is no shoe industry here now. Because there is Cocacola everywhere, Starbucks on every corner. Why does eveyone say `9/11 intead of the 9th of September.Its inexplicable. It just IS. It is not the way I am used to.Its human nature.
If you also represented the values that my religion teaches me (Imagine that I am a Fundamentalist) are evil, allowing women to expose their faces, expect to be treated equally by men, and generally treat my deeply held beliefs with scorn then I could imagine getting pretty riled up.It is change and I do not like change and I will fight to uphold the old ways.
Stupid isn`t it, but it is a fact.
Enough with the lecture. You have had some great experiences thank you for sharing them with us. You are a lucky man
Cheers
Pat ( I had much rather all this was taking place off list)
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