Dude! I got the chills twice reading this. I don’t know if you’re interested or not, but I think an article type response to @dandays with this type of information would give an entire platform chills. Thank you for being so detailed. I think it would also cause a lot of people to think and I doubt I’d be the only one responding. Man, what a head of knowledge you walk around with.

Brother Sweed, my uncle, he was my mother’s oldest brother was drafted to Vietnam. I didn’t know the why’s and how’s until now but I knew my uncle—RIP Uncle Paul. They told me he was never the same when he got back. The uncle I knew was in a lot of trouble man, a lot! King pin in the Hells Angels, slung a lot of illegal substances, that type of trouble. The last stint he did was a 9 year sentence and then his hay days finally caught up to him about 5 years ago. My point is, I was told he was quiet, to himself, and really smart before that war. God bless him and those 58,000 names—10x more than I saw and the ones I saw were unfathomable.

Man, I didn’t even say thanks for reading this article—“thank you.” Neither of us expected to find that memorial, either. It just ‘showed up.’ I didn’t plan on writing anything based on our trip that day, I’ve been doing that lately, I didn’t take one picture of anything else all day long, but I couldn’t help it once we found that memorial. God bless your buddy—tragic.

It wasn’t until you explained your reasoning for required enlistment when I wrote about Qusay that I thought about it. Although I would be opposed to it if the circumstances consisted of fighting against your own people, I’ve since changed my opinion to agree with yours. As far as foreign turf, throwing yourself on the front lines in the name of 1%, I think a required enlistment is a good idea.

Thank you for this response, sir. And thank you for appreciating the way I put it together, one thing I hope i didn’t paint was blame. I’ll never discredit the people as i am fully aware it’s the people in power responsible for these things. I hope you’re having a great week, Bob, we’ll talk again soon.