The first time I ever have felt this way was 12 September 2001.
It was the day after 11 September.
I had had time to think.
I was much younger then.
But I was old.
I was fifty nine.
What “feeling this way” entailed was, I wanted to get back in the fight.
I really wanted back in the fight.
I left had the military in December of 1968 as a Captain in the Air Force,
I went to work for IBM not long after that and 30 years flew by.
I had no desire to ever have anything again to do with the military.
But after I saw one of the planes – just after I had returned home from a nine mile run I had turned on CNBC to see what was up in the financial world - and I saw my world take a major hit as a plane flew into a building as I watched.
“Where can I sign up?” I thought to myself.
“I don’t know” was the response.
So my idea that if “the powers” could make me a lieutenant colonel and get me back into some combat support IT position (I had learned a few things in thirty years as an IBM employee and manager) I would go in a minute.
Or, if they were nuts enough to allow it, I might even consider carrying a gun.
But, as always happens to dreamers, I dreamed too long and had no idea where to try to plead my case nor did I have any idea if I had a case to plead.
So I did nothing.
Now it is 30 July 2014.
I am almost seventy two.
And now, in 2014, Russia is clearly a major threat to everything that Europe and the US have accomplished since 1945.
Putin is clearly a little tin Hitler.
But Hitler had been, once, clearly, a little tin Napoleon (a great man, unlike Hitler – or Putin) and we didn’t stop him – Hitler.
And we all know how that turned out.
So now I am back to wanting to sign up.
Shooting down an unarmed airliner and then lying about who did it is in league with Auschwitz.
The US needs to reinstate the draft post haste.
And that draft needs to take anybody willing who can still walk up four flights of stairs without breathing hard.
Anybody know where an old man who still rides a bike thirty miles a day (arthritis has made running not a real option any more) and can live for two months on the fourth floor of a Paris apartment without an elevator, and who walks four to five hours a day when in Paris can get his commission back?
And a promotion?
I still would like to be a light colonel.
I am ready for this fight.
I hope the rest of AmerEuropa is.
Related post at http://noellivefromparis.blogspot.com/2014/06/dont-try-to-talk-to-russians-in-paris.html