HomeschoolrsRUs
06-09-2005, 12:23 AM
Special Report
The Cost of the War on Terrorism
By Ben Stein (editor@spectator.org)
Published 6/6/2005 12:09:07 AM
On the Saturday night before Memorial Day, the cost of the war on terrorism were wearing red T-shirts. They were in a small ballroom on the second floor of the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel in Northern Virginia, within sight of the Pentagon.
There were about 250 of them. Children of men and women who had been killed in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and in training. They were maybe from age five to fifteen. They were handsome. They were pretty. They were cute. They had haunted eyes, some of them, and some of them cried. One family had five kids, and the oldest, a beautiful 15-year-old girl, could not stop crying.
They were being watched over by about thirty mentors, who were good-looking men and women from the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Army Honor Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. They serve as mentors and guides for the kids as the kids mourn their loss.
The kids had just gotten back from a field trip and were in a giddy, but still haunted mood, as they ate pizza. I spoke to them, hugged them, smeared my tears away as I could. I told them how pretty they were if they were girls and how brave and handsome they looked if they were boys.
A spectacularly cute little red-headed girl named Dawn slithered around me and pretended to be a dog to be patted. Or is it petted?
I told the kids their parents had died to save this country, to give kids in Iraq and Afghanistan the chance to choose their lives and to have the freedoms we take for granted. I told them there were not enough words in the English language to thank them enough for what they had done. For the sacrifice they had made. I told them their fathers and mothers had died doing God's work.
Then I signed autographs, mostly on the kids' T- shirts for about an hour.
I WISH I WERE ELOQUENT enough to tell you how brave these kids were and what a price they are paying. To lose a father while the rest of us complain about taxes and the stock market and the price of real estate. Quite a sight. Quite a concept.
How can we possibly repay them? How conceivably?
The rest of this remarkably poignant article found here: The American Spectator (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8261)
The Cost of the War on Terrorism
By Ben Stein (editor@spectator.org)
Published 6/6/2005 12:09:07 AM
On the Saturday night before Memorial Day, the cost of the war on terrorism were wearing red T-shirts. They were in a small ballroom on the second floor of the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel in Northern Virginia, within sight of the Pentagon.
There were about 250 of them. Children of men and women who had been killed in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and in training. They were maybe from age five to fifteen. They were handsome. They were pretty. They were cute. They had haunted eyes, some of them, and some of them cried. One family had five kids, and the oldest, a beautiful 15-year-old girl, could not stop crying.
They were being watched over by about thirty mentors, who were good-looking men and women from the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Army Honor Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. They serve as mentors and guides for the kids as the kids mourn their loss.
The kids had just gotten back from a field trip and were in a giddy, but still haunted mood, as they ate pizza. I spoke to them, hugged them, smeared my tears away as I could. I told them how pretty they were if they were girls and how brave and handsome they looked if they were boys.
A spectacularly cute little red-headed girl named Dawn slithered around me and pretended to be a dog to be patted. Or is it petted?
I told the kids their parents had died to save this country, to give kids in Iraq and Afghanistan the chance to choose their lives and to have the freedoms we take for granted. I told them there were not enough words in the English language to thank them enough for what they had done. For the sacrifice they had made. I told them their fathers and mothers had died doing God's work.
Then I signed autographs, mostly on the kids' T- shirts for about an hour.
I WISH I WERE ELOQUENT enough to tell you how brave these kids were and what a price they are paying. To lose a father while the rest of us complain about taxes and the stock market and the price of real estate. Quite a sight. Quite a concept.
How can we possibly repay them? How conceivably?
The rest of this remarkably poignant article found here: The American Spectator (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8261)