Written By Kevin Fobbs and Susan Swift | Sep 10, 2021 | Courtesy of CommDigiNews
Marine Sgt. Michael Kennick – Killed in Afghanistan at the Karzi Airport.
WASHINGTON: The history of American freedom is etched in the hearts and spirits of Gold Star Families whose sons and daughters have paid the ultimate sacrifice. The nation still mourns the deaths of those 13 service members dead due to Biden policies. As well as the nearly 2,500 troops and 4,000 contractors that died fighting this war.
That sacrifice for freedom begins when parents send their sons and daughters soldiers into battle. On 9/11 a Gold Star family and wife Alena will now grieve over Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss. He was one of 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26. According to a Pentagon official, he’s believed to be the last of the 2,461 U.S. service members who died in the war in Afghanistan. (NPR)
Sgt. Knauss death in Afghanistan is because Joe Biden canceled America’s greatness by retreating without honor. Biden has now enabled future Islamic terrorist attacks from Afghanistan. This same country spawned the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago.
This matters deeply to Gold Star families and the nation.
How do you ask a mom or dad to accept their soldier’s death because of a mistake?
John Kerry posed an important question in a 1971 congressional testimony on Vietnam, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” (Washington Times).
From the founding of America, military generals and battlefield commanders have provided their best estimation of exit strategies for battle.
Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Wilson had their measure of military challenges. Yet, in each instance, they measured their exit from a battle with a deliberate course of action necessary to retain dignity, American greatness, and keep honor intact.
In this, Biden has failed miserably.
War is never easy on a nation or on the families of the nation’s soldiers sent into battle.
Biden’s politically motivated, well televised, chaotic August abandonment was deliberately calculated. His narcissistic goal was to enhance his own self-image as the heroic presidential point man for re-election and history. The man who dodged the draft, while over 50,000 Gold Star mothers and families lost loved ones in Vietnam, made critical presidential errors.
The most recent blunder leading to 13 Gold Star families who now bear the immeasurable burden for his deliberate, political hubris and avoidable mistakes.
Military moms do matter and touch the hearts of truly caring presidents
On September 29, 2002, President Bush followed the tradition of many presidents and issued a presidential proclamation to honor Gold Star Mothers’ Day. It read in part
“Our Gold Star Mothers help us remember those who have been lost by upholding the ideals for which their children gave their lives. These brave women are devoted to improving and enhancing the lives of those in our Armed Forces, their families, and our veterans, and they encourage civic education, patriotism, and the teaching of American history,” White House.
Since June 23rd, 1936, after the passage of a joint congressional resolution, America has recognized the last Sunday of September as Gold Star Mother’s Day.
President Lincoln, unlike Biden, did not hold his hands up to the enemy and retreat from his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief. He, like President George W. Bush, listened to the mothers of America’s bravest warriors. Their well-known Christian compassion influenced their plans for fighting a war while preserving our national security.
In fact, President Lincoln received a number of letters from military moms during the Civil War. One, in particular, is striking in its tone and presidential request. It was not to save her son from an encounter with death in action. Rather it was a request for honor and fairness in the execution of that war.
Military Mother’s Letter to President Abraham Lincoln
“Excellent Sir. My good friend says I must write to you and she will send it. My son went in the 54th [Massachusetts] regiment. I am a colored woman and my son was strong and able as any to fight for his country and the colored people have as much to fight for as any. My father was a Slave and escaped from Louisiana before I was born morn (sic) forty years agone (sic). I have but poor edication (sic) but I never went to schol. But I know just as well as any what is right between man and man. Now I know it is right that a colored man should go and fight for his country, and so ought to a white man. I know that a colored man ought to run no greater risques (sic) than a white. His pay is no greater his obligation to fight is the same. So why should not our enemies be compelled to treat him the same, Made to do it (sic).
My son fought at Fort Wagoner but thank God he was not taken prisoner, as many were I thought of this thing before I let my boy go but then they said Mr. Lincoln will never let them sell our colored soldiers for slaves, if they do he will get them back quck (sic) he will rettallyate(sic) and stop it. Now Mr. Lincoln dont (sic) you think you oght (sic) to stop this thing and make them do the same by the colored men they have lived in idleness all their lives on stolen labor and made savages of the colored people, but they now are so furious because they are proving themselves to be men, such as have come away and got some edication (sic). It must not be so. You must put the rebels to work in State prisons to making shoes and things, if they sell our colored soldiers, till they let them all go. And give their wounded the same treatment. it would seem cruel, but their (sic) no other way, and a just man must do hard things sometimes, that shew (sic) him to be a great man. They tell me some do you will take back the [Emancipation] Proclamation, don’t do it. When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that action of yours will make the Angels sing your praises. I know it….
Will you see that the colored men fighting now, are fairly treated. You ought to do this, and do it at once, Not let the thing run along meet it quickly and manfully, and stop this, mean cowardly cruelty. We poor oppressed ones, appeal to you, and ask fair play. Yours for Christs sake. Hannah Johnson, Buffalo, New York. July 1863 “Smithsonian Magazine .
Military moms do matter. President Lincoln wrote a letter to a grieving mother, Lydia Bixby, who had lost her son in battle:
Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864
Dear Madam,
“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, 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 altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln,” according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
What would Biden have done had he received such a letter? Would Biden do as Lincoln did and use compassion and honor, to guide his purposeful decision to leave Afghanistan? The nation knows the answer. His actions allowing American soldiers to fall victim to his dishonorable retreat.
Sadly, one wonders whether Biden would bother to read any mother’s letter at all.
When terrorists attacked America on 9/11 moms and dads did not cower or retreat
America’s military families share very common attributes that are not mere slogans, talking points, or self-gratifying platitudes. Honor, duty, service is part of their family’s DNA and it is embodied in one essential teaching from the Bible. This verse can be found embedded in the hearts of countless Gold Star families.
John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends.”
Susan Price is one of those remarkable Gold Star moms who embodies the strength of a Christian warrior.
She raised her son, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Aaron M. Kenefick, with those biblical principles found in John 15:13. Price, a daughter of a Marine and an Army veteran, learned Sgt. Kenefick was KIA Sept 8th 2009. This American hero’s death occurred in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan during the “Ganjgal Ambush.”
In that ambush, 13 American service members were killed. This was the same number who died in August at the Kabul airport. Both occurred under Biden’s watch.
During that same time period, what Vice President Biden told President Barack Obama set the stage for his August military retreat 12 years later. In Bob Woodward’s 2010 book Obama’s Wars , according to Vox , Biden felt the “Afghan Taliban posed little threat to the US homeland.”
Biden wrote a six-page memo to Obama questioning intelligence reports that portrayed the Taliban as a new al-Qaeda. He did not feel they were recruiting foreign fighters which posed a transnational terrorist threat. He added in a phone call to Obama, “it would not be that bad if the Karzai government fell.”
Biden also oversaw the Iraq War exit, which spawned the rise of the deadly Islamic terrorist group ISIS. For Gold Star mothers and their families, Biden’s political retreat mistakes do have irreversible deadly effects.
On 9/11 honor Gold Star Families even if Biden has not treated them as such
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, there are 1.3 million active-duty military personnel or less than one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. population. Therefore, one-half of 1 percent of the nation is serving to protect 100 percent of America from terrorism.
On the 20th anniversary of the attack on America’s homeland, it is essential that Americans honor those Gold Star families who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our safety and freedom.
One way to honor American’s fallen soldiers is to support Hope for Warriors. It is an organization that helps,
“1,728,710 family members who served alongside their Active-Duty service member. Included in that number there were 1,076,803 children and 641,639 spouses,” according to 2015 reported data. These programs work to restore “a sense of self, family, and hope by focusing on transition, health, and well-being. In addition, they focus on peer engagement and connections to community resources.”
A 20-year war can seem like an eternity for millions of Americans. One percent of Americans answer the call to service. For their families, the loss of a loved one to war is never-ending. The death of a child is unnatural, and a parent suffers all of their life.
Make the effort to honor those who have survived. These survivors include parents, spouses, and children.
“This recognition is important to honor the families of the Fallen and those who are deployed,” according to Hope for Warriors.
Taliban Thrilled: Psaki Confirms Biden Will Not Speak on 20th Anniversary of 9/11
The White House has confirmed that Biden will not make public remarks on 9/11 as a result of the outcry after his bungling of the Afghanistan withdrawal leading to the needless death of Sgt. Krauss and 12 others. As well as the wounding of many more.
Biden’s push was to create a 9/11 photo op where he could declare “I am the only president who could remove America from this endless war.” When in fact he has opened the flood gate to not only more deaths, but Afghanistan 2.0. Were we are sure to lose more of America’s treasure.
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If you want to know the truth about American Black History, get woke to what Cancel Culture is purposely hiding. Democrats are playing the race card to commit historical genocide. It’s all revealed in Shut Yo’ Mouth! How the Left Plays the Race Card to Silence Conservatives and How to Stop It.
It’s probably the most dangerous book liberals, BLM and Antifa do not want you to read.
About the authors:
Kevin Fobbs began writing professionally in 1975. He has been published in the “New York Times,” and has written for the “Detroit News,” “Michigan Chronicle,” “GOPUSA,” “Soul Source” and “Writers Digest” magazines. In addition to the Ann Arbor and Cleveland “Examiner,” “Free Patriot,” “Conservatives4 Palin” and “Positively Republican.” The former daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on conservative News Talk WDTK – 1400 AM in Detroit, he is also a published author. His Christian children’s book, “Is There a Lion in My Kitchen,” hit bookstores in 2014.
California PolitiChick Susan Swift Arnall is a lawyer, wife, and conservative mother of seven children. Since her impassioned call into Rush Limbaugh’s radio program in 2009, Susan has given political commentary on radio and blogs and was invited in 2010 by Andrew Breitbart to write for his young website Big Journalism. She has written over 60 published articles for Breitbart.
Tags: 9/11 Gold Star Families, Gold Star families, Gold Star Mother, Hope for Warriors, Kabul 13, military mom, Sgt. Aaron M. Kenefick, Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, Susan Price
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