Eye Opening

 Eye Opening

When I was 19 I had a very eye opening experience. I was stationed in Cuba, Gitmo to be exact. I was a part of the Marine Barracks ground defense force and we were nicknamed “the war pigs” I was a battery powered grunt, meaning I carried a radio on my back and spent many a night on perimeter patrol playing cat and mouse with Cuban army. On many a night we would “catch “ deserters from the Cuban forces who wanted to be sent to the states to be with family, or civilians who risked no mans land, loaded with land mines, just to get to us and freedom. As a 19 year old Marine this was exciting, but it wasn't the eye opener. It was those people that didn't make it. The communist Cuban army thought nothing of killing them; men, women, and children who were trying to escape to us and freedom and then leaving their bodies to rot in the sun. We could do nothing but watch unless they could get their hands on the fence, once they did we could give them cover fire and cut holes needed in the fence to let them in, but we could only watch until then.

Ironically enough my father was a Cuban who escaped from Cuba because of the communists and at the age of 19 I was back there for a serious lesson as to why. It was eye opening.

Later I went to another Island for an R and R and I spent a week in a country that the military ruled with an iron hand and the people were dirt poor. My buddies and I decided that we would spend our time where the natives did and learn what things were really like. We literally stayed away from the tourist areas and learned a lot. While the people were dirt poor as I previously mentioned , they welcomed us in and opened up their homes to us. By homes I mean dirt floor shacks and huts, some had “cardboard” houses, some had even less. They shared their food with us and told us their stories and we were shocked, not because they were kind to us, but because of the dictatorial rule, they had nothing, and yet shared what they had with us. It was,again, eye opening.

In my short span of years, I have been to many countries that were ruled by tyrants and dictators. I have seen people so poor that their doorways had sheets covering them and the powerful drive by men driving a donkey, in their Mercedes. I saw children playing right next to cess pools filled with human waste, while others were out in the middle of no where in rags and begging for food.

Why do I tell you these things?

Lately I have been seeing how much certain groups of people are slamming on the United states and the system that we have here and it makes me somewhere between sad and angry.

Most of them are young and they are egged on by socialist minded professors. They have done nothing and have experienced nothing. They have lived in a bubble and have been so badly indoctrinated that they know nothing else but to whine and complain while wearing designer clothes and talking on their expensive phones. I have a solution.

Bring back the draft. You would get many disgruntled, ill informed kids, off the streets and they might actually learn something about this country that they despise. In the military you get a dose of reality when you no longer are an individual and have to take responsibility for all your actions and your decisions. You learn team work and pride, you learn actual history ( at least we did in my day) and you may wind up in a foreign country that would open their eyes,as mine were, to the reality of just how good they have it here.

There are other solutions but this would be a first good step.