Mike Huckabee When I heard recently about a community in New Jersey who complained that the sound of Reveille and the Star Spangled Banner from a nearby Navy base disturbed their peace, my reaction was not sympathy for their pain. I live on the Gulf Coast these days, surrounded by some of America’s premier military installations. Eglin AFB, home of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter, along with Hurlburt Field, training center for Special Ops forces, are both just a few miles away. So is Tyndall AFB, where F-22 Raptors, Ospreys, and helicopter gunships are deployed. Just to the west is the Pensacola Naval Air Station, home of the Blue Angels. I see Navy ships on maneuvers, and Coast Guard helicopters and patrol boats going out into storms to rescue people who are as dumb as the Coast Guard is brave. When low-flying aircraft zoom right above my house, rattling the windows, my reaction is to smile and say “Thank you.” Those are not the sounds of annoyance -- those are the sounds of freedom, and I never tire of hearing them. This is the HR Those sounds mean that the most motivated and highly-trained men and women in the history of the military are on the job to provide a net of security for my family. I would much prefer for windows to rattle from the sounds of a fighter jet flying low over my house in a training mission than the sound of a bomb in my front yard put there by America’s enemies. If the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines or Coast Guard wants to blast Reveille or the National Anthem in my neighborhood in the morning, so be it. If they are getting up that early to protect me, then I sure as heck ought to be willing to drag my butt out of bed to salute them. I’ve been in parts of the world where the battles are fought in the very neighborhoods where children live, or at least try to. I’ve been in homes, schools, synagogues and markets in Sderot in Israel with holes in the roof from where Palestinians fired rockets from Gaza, attempting to murder Israeli children. The sound of an F-35 over my head is far more comforting to me than the sound of an enemy rocket soaring into my kitchen. So if you hear some noise coming from a military installation near you, instead of calling City Hall and whining, how about a call to Heaven, to tell God that you appreciate being an American, and ask if He would please keep an eye out for those folks making the noise.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 21:03:06 +0000
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