Letters From Iraq, Part 12

This letter showed up on 7/2/2007

Imagine all the emotions that must flood the mind of a parent as their child serves our country in one of the worlds “hot spots.” Then imagine that that one hot spot seeks to exist. Where would the child go from there?

Hi Ryan,

Hope all is well by you. Have not had a chance to get back to you since our last exchange concerning the state of the Army. I can’t say I was surprised by your reply and I support you 100% in your decision. If I was in your boots, I think I would do the same thing. I don’t see our involvement in this war being open ended and sooner or later we will be out of it. The radical Islamic fanatics would love to see us tied up there forever, but I think our government, whoever may be running the show after 08, will move to get us out. There appears to be more political movement between our government, the Syrians and others in the region and that might help. In the meantime, we need to build up our forces worldwide to cover any other hot spots that might come across the horizon. I see other unstable countries (N Korea for one) sitting back and looking at the situation and plotting to pull something off. You might notice that N. Korea still has not pulled the plug on their nuclear reactor like they promised once they got the millions of dollars released that we were withholding from them. Their thinking is, what can we do about it…. Europe is relatively stable, so we should consider redeploying more forces from there than we currently are. We should reevaluate and shift our foreign aid and certain military expenditures and rebuild and replenish our land based military arsenal. I think the Pentagon is already starting to shift funding from the Navy, Coast Guard and to some degree the Air Force and that is a wise move for the short term. Well enough from me on this. The top dogs don’t ask for my input. Don’t know if you heard but, six radicals were plotting to pull off an assault against troops at Fort Dix. They were nipped in the bud by some pretty smart counter Intel folks. Last time Jan and I visited Fort Dix; you could just drive right on and go anywhere. Hopefully security has tightened up there now. I remember the only time I saw the gates at Fort Dix shutdown was in 1965 or 66 during the Vietnam War, when they were trying to keep Anti-War protestors off the post. We will probably see more of this stuff and hopefully, we can catch them all but some of these nut cases will probably succeed in their twisted plots. Well pal, I will sign off for now. Take care and keep safe. We think of you all the time.

Love
Dad and Jan
PS. Scott and Bobby have both been down with a flu/virus thing. Pretty rough stuff and Jan and I are praying we don’t catch it. Don’t forget to send me some names and addresses