A couple of weeks ago I went through a period of low posting activity. I had posted Making the Army of Reconquista, and visitor traffic increased dramatically. I decided to take advantage of my so-far most popular post, and put in a lot of time and effort dropping comments and trackbacks to it on blogs where illegal immigration was a hot topic. During this period of navel gazing, I frequently checked my hit counter statistics to check on where recent visitors were coming from (referrers).
Many were fellow 101st Fighting Keyboardists, the Chicken Hawks. I had joined the Chicken Hawks, even though I am a retired Air Force officer who served from 1962 to 1984, through the Vietnam War and the Cold War years. I joined for two reasons. The first is that in twenty one and a half years of military service, I was never in a combat zone. The second reason was I thought it was chicken shit that the Left was calling supporters of the Iraq war Chicken Hawks if they had not served in the military. Can only lawyers have an opinion on the law? Can only doctors have an opinion on healthcare? And by the criteria established by the Left, how come they get to say a damn thing about national defense?
As I examined “referrers,” sometimes it seemed on a minute by minute basis, I started noticing that a lot of the strongest supporters of the military had Blue Star banners. When I investigated what the Blue Star was all about, I found it existed for two purposes: to show support for our military; and to indicate a child in the military. I qualify on both counts. I support a strong, active military, and my oldest son served 16 years in the Army, and has been on continuous active duty in the Nevada Army National Guard since 9/11. Within a couple of weeks following the fall of Iraq, he was stationed as a military police prisoner guard at Abu Ghraib for eight months. Since then he has been on continuous call-up, and may deploy again to Iraq.
My middle son is drawing disability pay for an aircraft accident which required him to leave the Air Force at the end of his enlistment.
For these, and many other reasons, I will with pride join the Blue Star Blogroll.
And I'll post the banner as soon as I can get it done without befouling the left column and completely screwing up my home page layout.
Major Michael B. Combs, U S Air Force, Retired
Gualala, California
No comments:
Post a Comment