Veteran Brain Teaser/Delimma

I can't believe that I'm writing another post so soon after I finished the previous one. One of the reasons I started thinking about another post this soon was due to the number of supporters that commented positively about the last post.

The other reason came during a dinner conversation with Melissa that suggested how careful we must be to stay focused on Veteran Affairs and not focused on political issues.

As I thought about that statement, I began to think about the differences between "Policy" and specific attacks against any political figure.

I became more and more comfortable with that thought when I realized that there were many voters in Congress who may or may not have voted the way you wanted them to vote. When I thought about that, I knew that taking on Policy did not necessarily mean that you had to take on every single Senator or Reprentative in Congress.

That brought me to thoughts about the methodology that might be used to canvas the entire Veteran population of the U.S. to find out what they thought about any given issue.

I thought about the many polls I've seen on the net and how they formed a question or statement about any given issue, how they reported the total number of people polled, the percentages of those who thought one way and the percentages of those that thought another way. I was pretty happy with that and wondered how much it may cost to put that capacity into a web site.

As I continued to wander around my emails, I found one from the Red River Fighter Pilot's Association that threw another curve ball my way. The subject line contained a title regarding Lt. Colonel Terry Lankin's situation. You may remember him as the Officer who refused to be deployed because the President refused to produce the records of elligibility required by the Constitution.

I didn't get  into the specifics of it but I did read one very interesting quote. Inside the article, he made a statement that explained "Why my vow to defend the Constitution demanded that I sacrificed my career". From that, I wondered what the vote would look like if you had the capacity to poll every Veteran in the U.S. and ask his thoughts about it. That brought on two challenges instead of just one.

If staying out of political issues like Melissa suggested was one challenge, I felt that issues like Lt. Colonel Lankin's was another challenge or maybe an opportunity that certainly qualified itself as one that contained a Veteran in need.

While considering Lankin and the possibilities that he may have been exposed to combat experiences like we were and therfore have the mind set of a combat veteran, I began to mentally associate him with many of the guys that came back from Vietnam and made career decisions that weren't according to Hoyle.

I was one of those guys. I actually told my old boss that HE was fired as my preferred vendor instead of ME resigning as a Manufacturer's Representative of his company. I cited the fact that I came to be his Rep as a result of his National Sales Manager asking me to consider them as my preferred vendor. I'm just as guilty as the next guy who did something off the chart and it may well be that Lankin was right in what he did. I'll have to dig that up in the Oath.

I wondered how many guys remembered the specifics of the Oath they took to Defend the Constition. I'm one of the guys who did not remember the specifics of the Oath and instead, simply took it to heart that anything that threatened the Constitution, threatened me and I would defend it to the death.

From all these thoughts came other visions of how important a "Brain Trust" would be to an organization such as the proposed "Every Vet" site.

As if there weren't enough thoughts running around in my head, I began to think about any negative effect that might come from the readership if they thought this process was becoming one that was laden with problems instead of opportunities.

Nobody wants to get involved with problems but there are often times where situations appear to be problematic, but in effect, through careful analysis, prove to be more of a stimulant to solve a situtation instead of making it into something that you describe as a problem.

It's hard for me to remove the emotion that comes with some of today's situations but it isn't impossible. The VA has provided me with tons of information that comes during sessions where many Veteran's thought processes are discussed.

One memorable appointment probed the difference between making emotional decisions and decisions that are based on evidence.

Another appointment suggested that we considered changing the way we feel about something by changing the way we think about it. I took that to mean we should open our minds and consider as much evidence as we could when making our conclusions.

Having thought about that, I decided to look into the details of our Oath and the organization that Ed Usrey suggested that I look into. It's called "Oath Keepers" and I intend to look into it before I go any further into the needs I have to get help from the Brain Trust that most of you belong to.

I'll sign off with that as I've already taken a coke break, edited this post and figured that this is enough for one night. If you kept reading this far, thanks for the ear and please consider looking into Lankin's story and the Oath that we took..