I Was A Slave For 20 Years?

Bob Newman

Radical leftist Reggie Rivers, the wealthy former Denver Bronco and current opinion columnist and socialist hit man for the Denver Post, says in his most recent piece that I was a slave in the Marine Corps and that everyone serving in the U.S. military is a slave, too. Let’s wade through Reggie’s elitist diatribe, shall we?

According to Rivers, “Our military is one of the last bastions of slavery in the United States. At the moment, our slaves are stuck in a combat zone, getting killed and maimed, and there's nothing they can do about it except hunker down and pray.”

Reggie, Reggie, Reggie. If you think insulting our military personnel is going to win you any friends, you are mistaken, lad. And as a retired infantry unit leader and ground combat veteran, I would like to assure you that the military can and does do plenty more than hunker down and pray. The military, Reg, has weapons, training, tactics and leaders that are taking the offensive and bringing the fight to the enemy, killing hundreds of terrorists in recent days with extremely light U.S. casualties. Implying our military men and women are cowards who simply cower and whimper under fire reveals your true agenda, Reggie, which is to degrade them because you are ashamed to have never had the courage or sense of duty to serve your country. Psychiatrists call this “anger transference.”

Reggie blathers on, “…our slaves signed up of their own free will, but most of them were…misled about their job…” So, Reg: When did you ask most military personnel why they joined? Say what? Oh, you didn’t? I see. In reality (a place I know you are loath to go), when Americans decide to serve their country, I like to think they are actually clever enough to realize that militaries fight wars from time to time. You clearly think they are too stupid to know this.

“Brainwashing,” says Rivers, is why Americans join the military and fight those who want to kill every American man, woman and child. The truth of the matter, which Reg would rather you didn’t know (and wouldn’t know under the one-party system he so desperately yearns for), is based upon a word with which Reggie has no personal frame of reference: duty. If Reggie were to ask any military personnel fighting the war on terror why they fight, duty would be the overwhelming response. But Reggie has never put himself in harm’s way and has never felt it is his duty to give something back to the country that gave him everything. Reggie and his ilk believe that receiving is always preferable to giving.

Rivers goes on to say that military personnel “…find themselves sitting in a Humvee in Iraq, with their best friend lying dead on the floor next to them, and they suddenly realize the deception of their recruitment.” Here the wild-eyed leftist insinuates he knows what goes through the minds of men and women in positions he has no experience in whatsoever. Having been there and done that, I guarantee Rivers is miles off base.

But Rivers has every right to attack our courageous military men and women. They are fighting to make sure he always has that right, which is the greatest irony of all.
Sleep well tonight, Reggie, for your “slaves” are on duty, a concept Colorado Marine Lance Corporal Jason Murray, blind and disfigured, has forgotten more about that you will ever know.

###

Bob Newman, a retired, decorated US Marine, is co-host of "Redmond & Newman" on 630 KHOW in Denver, and is the military science and terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com