Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins last month posthumously became the fifth US service member to receive the Medal of Honor (the nation’s highest award for combat valor) for his actions during the Iraq War—in 2007.
According to an article in the Washington Post (“Soldier’s posthumous Medal of Honor highlights the Pentagon’s struggles to fully recognize valor in combat”), Atkins and his fellow soldiers rolled up in their Humvee on “two suspicious men in Iraq’s ‘Triangle of Death.’” Atkins “stepped out of the Humvee and walked toward the first stranger” while “an Army medic stepped out of the back seat, moving toward the second.” Atkins unexpectedly “began grappling with the first Iraqi,” “gabbed him in a bear hug,” “slammed him to the ground,” and “pinned him down.”
Then the detonation happened.
Atkins’s son, who was eleven when his father died, “accepted the award on behalf of his late father from President Trump, who highlighted how Atkins, then 31, died June 1, 2007, saving the lives of the three other soldiers by choosing to smother a suicide vest with his own body.” “In his final moments on earth, Travis did not run. He didn’t know what it was to run,” Trump said. “He laid down his life to save the lives of his fellow warriors.”
Reading about Staff Sgt. Atkins’ sacrifice of himself reminded me of something I saw in a hotel in Alabama last month. While eating breakfast, I noticed some information on the table about Operation Homefront and wrote it down:
Give Back to Those Who Sacrifice So Much to Keep Us Safe.
Choice Hotels is proud to announce their partnership with Operation Homefront.
Join Choice Hotels in supporting veterans and military families through Operation Homefront, a national nonprofit whose mission is to build strong, stable, and secure military families.
Support Operation Homefront today—because every little bit helps.
I took the bait and went to the Operation Homefront website:
Operation Homefront is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to build strong, stable, and secure military families so they can thrive — not simply struggle to get by — in the communities they have worked so hard to protect. For over fifteen years, we have provided programs that offer: RELIEF (through Critical Financial Assistance and transitional housing programs), RESILIENCY (through permanent housing and caregiver support services) and RECURRING FAMILY SUPPORT programs and services throughout the year that help military families overcome the short-term bumps in the road so they don’t become long-term chronic problems.
Our troops and their families work tirelessly to protect the freedoms we enjoy daily and they deserve our very best efforts to support them.
Operation Homefront, which was started in 2002, sees itself “as a conduit by which Americans are able to show their appreciation for all that our military community does on our behalf.”
Someone has got to ask the difficult and controversial questions so it might as well be me.
The conclusion is inescapable: Staff Sgt. Atkins made a senseless sacrifice. As Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger has well said: “The truth, as discomforting as it is, is that the many U.S soldiers who have been sacrificed in America’s countless foreign wars did not die defending our freedom. That’s nothing more than a false bromide used to justify America’s never-ending foreign wars.”
It did not benefit the United States or any individual in it for any soldier to go to Iraq. It rather needlessly cost the United States thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
Although some soldiers and their families have made sacrifices, no sacrifice they made had any impact on the safety of Americans.
The military does not keep Americans safe. Because its actions around the world result in blowback and create more terrorists, insurgents, and enemies of the United States, the military actually makes Americans less safe.
The military does not work hard to protect communities in the United States. It rather works hard to destroy communities in foreign countries.
The military does not work tirelessly to protect the freedoms that Americans enjoy. American freedoms have been steadily eroded since US troops went to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The greatest threat to American freedoms is the US government, not the governments of Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Niger, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The military community does nothing on behalf of Americans. We can do without their service of bombing, maiming, and killing for the government.
And here is another question for you: If military personnel are such special people (as we are continually told), then why do so many of them need help from organizations like Operation Homefront?
Just asking.
Reprinted with permission from LewRockwell.com.
