"Special Forces"

Those who live in this Great Country and have chosen not to protect and defend it, owe a serious debt of gratitude to those who have.

I was just thinking that while watching an episode of "Special Forces," KTTV-11, 9:00 p.m., Tuesdays.  

It proposes to put 16 "celebrities," some of whom I'd never heard of, through a "boot camp" sort of like that undertaken by recruits in the special forces of our Country.  

Past Seals, Rangers, and even a Brit former SAS officer lead the staff.  They're the trainers in this made-for-TV program, intended for us mere mortals to have a look under the hood of what this sort of training might be all about.  In short, these professional soldiers who run this exercise know how to break men and women down to their protoplasm, and then build them back up one corpuscle and one sinew at a time.

As one who's gone through it, or suffered through it, I can tell you, you often expect to die.  You even HOPE to die!  It's so incredibly horrible, so terrible, so unbearable, that you wish you were never born.  There's no words even to describe it.  That's why many soldiers don't even try.  

Some of the training courses involve live ammunition, aimed at YOU!  You swim through mud.  You low-crawl through broken glass.  You jump off 61' tall parachute training towers whether you're afraid of heights or not (I wish I was shorter!).  Trust me, you're more afraid of your trainer than you are of any height.  

It's like the TV show but on steroids, with swearing, kicking and screaming thrown in.  As one of the trainers on this show said, "If you die, it's nature's way of telling you you've failed."  Half of those who attempt these sort of courses in the real world do not pass.  Some even die.  Those who come out the other end are hardened, focused and dedicated warriors.  To be feared, for sure.

Their are 1.1 million of your fellow citizens serving right now in the United States Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard and the Space Force.  That's less than 2% of our adult population.*  There are 1.7 million veterans of service in those branches of our military.  Some are not doing so well, and need our help.  31,000 are listed as homeless.  Seems to me we should help them before the millions who're being "welcomed," right now at our Southern Border.  From 165 countries.  7 million of them.  Plus 1.2 million "gotaways."  So far.  

But that's just me...  

*    We missed our recruitment goal for the 5 services by more than 15% last year.  So those who could and should step up to defend America, so far haven't.  Sun Tzu's The "Art of War" tells us that in time of peace we should prepare for war.  I hear the war drums beating in the distance.  Do we have an answer?