The Children are our Future!

As a former Army Airborne Ranger and a current Department of Defense employee, I will be the first to say that I don’t know the answer.

Should we stay or should we go??

As spouses, brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws, we hate to see our service members deploy into harm’s way.

What good could come out of all of this? We want our family at home to watch our kid’s recitals, baseball games, and to share in all the excitement of a graduation or the birth of a new family member.

We get tired of seeing the newspapers and television reporters say the same monotonous things over and over. “We are helping build a new life for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq”.

These children we see on the news haven’t done anything wrong. They have been born into circumstances that are beyond their control. I imagine that the children of Iraq would love Disneyland, watching Hannah Montana, or just eating cereal in front of the television on Saturday morning while they take in cartoons.

Our children have opportunities because our service members protect our way of life, because they help bring stability to other regions. Our children can become who they want because our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coasties do what they do. They bring stability to a world that needs it.

The best thing that we can do is focus on what we can control; stability in our own homes. We need to stay active, we need to have a schedule, we need to believe!

Believe in what our service members are doing overseas. Believe in their training. Believe in their brothers and sisters that are standing on the right and left of them when they dig in on the front lines.

Best regards,

Marc CB Maxwell