Freedom, is it worth the price?

An intallment on the Price of Freedom was paid locally over the weekend. Three Tennessee national guard soldiers from the 278th RCT paid their obligation in full (no balance due remaining) on Saturday, August 13; SSG Asbury Hawn of Lebanon, SGT Shannon Taylor of Smithville, & SGT Gary Reese of Ashland City. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of these men and I pray that God will give them comfort in the knowledge that they died defending liberty and freedom.

If I could speak to those families personnally, I would tell them that I have no idea the amount of pain and loss they are suffering, but...I would assure them that as a soldier who has faced that split second in time that seperates life and death, as someone who has experienced that surreal, awful, exilerating moment when bullets are flying and rockets are exploding, as someone who has done those things and still remains on this side of eternity, I am confident one of the last things their soldiers were thinking off was their loved ones at home.

Death is something that is always only a heartbeat away. It is something we will all one day face unless we live to see the day Jesus returns to claim his Bride. Between cancer and car accidents and heart disease, death is rarely "worth" something. SSG Hawn & SGT's Taylor and Reese' death's and all soldiers and airmen and sailors who have died in battle are the expection.

Whatever your politics, you cannot honestly say that the service men and women who have died in the Global War on Terror have died in vain. If you think that we are in Iraq under false pretenses and the troops should be brought home immediately, I respect your opinion. I think you are wrong but....that is one of the reasons these three men died, so that you may freely express your displeasure of the government and so that the people of Iraq may one day be able to do the same. Whether you hate President Bush or love him, whether you hate the war in Iraq or support it, whatever your view, the only way SSG Hawn and SGT's Taylor and Reese will have died in vain is if we as a country decide one day that freedom isn't worth the price of their lives.

To the families of SSG Hawn and SGT Reese & SGT Taylor, God bless you and comfort you. Know that each time an Iraqi (or an Afghani) raises their voice in freedom and says, "I have a say in my future." they will have Asbury & Shannon & Gary to thank for it. I will leave you with words much more eloquent than I can compose spoken to a mother long ago who lost five sons in battle. "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assauge the anguish of your berevement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom."

Abraham Lincoln 1864

Asbury, Shannon, Gary, I'm proud of you. Rest in peace.

SSG Dale