OldDevilDawg
'21 Co-PotY
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Disagree. 58 Combat missions. We need a lot more pussys like that in the government leadership...
And so passes George Herbert Walker Bush, the last American President to face combat. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the United States into World War II, he deferred admission to Yale and joined the Navy at the age of 18, just out of prep school in the June of 1942. He went to war in 1943, barely a man, saying later, “I was scared but I was willing. I was young, but I was ready. I had barely started living when I began to see men die.” He saw significant combat across the Pacific as a carrier-based bomber pilot, serving with deep courage and commitment, completing 58 combat missions and surviving two crashes.
He nearly died in 1944, when his aircraft, a torpedo bomber, was shot down during an attack on the Japanese occupied atoll of Chichi Jima in the western Pacific. He ditched the aircraft into the sea and managed to scramble into a life raft. Bush was rescued at sea by a surfacing U.S. diesel submarine — the only member of his squadron to survive the mission. The story of his miraculous rescue is well known; less well known is the pain he felt for decades at the loss of the other two crew members on his bomber, and the rest of the aircraft on that raid. He was the lone survivor and always asked himself, “Why me?” Ultimately, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and three air medals, an outstanding combat record by any measure. He was the last American President to serve in combat.
This is true, and I will always respect his service to our country.
That said, during the Gulf War, he stopped us before we went into Baghdad. It pissed me off. Every Gulf War veteran that I know was pissed off. We knew back then, when we were there and at the gate, that if we didn't go into Baghdad and rid the world of Saddam Hussein, that our sons and daughters would have to risk their lives doing what we were literally inches away from. Bush didn't have the political guts to finish the job while we were there. I personally know an Army veteran that lost his son the second go round. That man still says today that he would have gladly given his life back then so his son could be living his now.
