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Worth Living For (Editorial by Jerald O'Brien)

Some people are saying we can't win a war against terrorism, that the Afghan's are too tough, the terrain too inhospitable, the terrorist enemy too disparate. Some people are saying America should not spill its children's blood in this war against terrorism. I say, if it should happen, some things are worth dying for, and that there is no tougher fighter in the world than Americans.

I've often thought of the phrase "that is worth living for." People throw that phrase around all the time. But what, I wonder, is really worth dying for? I feel if it is really, really, worth living for, then it should be worth dying for.

I would fight and give my life, if I had to, for my child and wife and my family and friends if they were in trouble or danger. These are things, I thought, really worth living for. I hear some people say a really good chocolate cake is worth living for, or Manet's landscapes, or a well made chopped salad. But based on my barometer, I don't know if they are worth dying for.

Last Tuesday I realized there was one more thing I would consider really worth living for--and for an ex-serviceman to say this, it is very ironic--but it is a thing that up until then I really never understood; even when I was digging foxholes day after day in the Army, I never understood this thing worth living for, this concept embodied in a word. Even when I jumped out of planes as a paratrooper I never understood what this word really meant or why Americans had died for it. When I was on leave, and met old men on town squares, who shook my hand and thanked me for my service and told me how they had fought for this word, this concept, I never understood it. Not at all. And I heard the word all the time, especially in the Army, mostly spoken by older veterans; I remembered one sergeant at the Yakima firing range, he'd been a POW in Korea for 2 years and I remember he told me I didn't know what the hell the word meant (he saw me slacking in an irrigation ditch--laying in the water (it was really hot there), when I should have been on duty--he caught me red-handed, and he yelled: O'Brien, you don't know the point, do ya?" I said "what, Sergeant?" He said, "the reason we are out here in this desert, training, looking through our field glasses," I thought, what is this old nut talking about. Then he said the word. And he added that I was too damned stupid to ever understand it.

Later I thought about what he said. I thought he was just nutty.

That was 26 years ago. But last Tuesday I finally understood what he and everyone else meant. As I watched those passenger airliners viciously needled into the unwilling veins of those towers, and all the innocents gave their last gasp, and the towers fell, I knew. I understood the word then, like a lightning bolt had hit me between the eyes. I knew why the founding fathers founded the country. I knew why Rangers scaled the cliffs on D-Day, I knew why Marines left wives and children to charge machine guns on Iwo Jima; I knew then that everything I had so selfishly taken for granted should never be taken for granted: like walking in my neighborhood; like speaking my mind in public; like voting, like writing this missive. I finally understood the meaning of "freedom."

I knew what the old soldiers meant when they said "I fought for our freedom." Freedom means something. It's funny, but I remembered Mel Gibson yelling "Freedom!" when he was rallying his Scots against the English and I thought the first time I saw it, "Freedom? He's going to rally that army with that word?" But it means something more to me now. Those warriors knew the meaning of freedom, and they knew it was worth living for.

When I was in the 2/75th and the 2/60th and we were threatened with problems in the Congo and Korea, I wasn't afraid to go there and quell things if we would have had to, but I wasn't enamored with either cause--because I didn't understand them. I think today's Rangers and infantry and fighting man see what I saw on that Tuesday--we have a cause, we have a reason. We have a real driving force and a point to dig foxholes, to drop from the sky, to work in intelligence, to gather information, to drive on, to not stop until we have crushed our enemies. We are fighting for freedom. Our enemies want to cloak the world in darkness, to regress civilization, to take away our wives, our sons, how we learn, what we eat, our dress, our speech, our travel, our thoughts.

The Brits and Soviets lost in Afghanistan, everyone said. But the Brits and Soviets were just trying to widen their empire--no one fights with their heart when all they try to do is to widen an empire. Americans are fighting against people who want to take our freedom away.

I know Rangers. I know many Special Forces troops. I've met people in Intelligence. I know they feel like me today. We are going to be careful, we are going to be patient, we are going to be tough and we are going to win.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001

Answers

And some folks say, "But, at what price, what cost, this freedom?"

To them we say, "Any price, any cost."

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2001