Capt. James Smith, a.k.a. Rep. James Smith, D-Richland, sends this PDF file to friends back home.
And so I share it with you:
Download 21_may_2007_camp_phoenix_reunions.pdf
Needless to say, as an American, a South Carolinian, and a friend, I’m very proud of that guy, and deeply appreciative. I’m very proud of the whole 218th Brigade, it’s just that I know James.
If I were so honored as to be embedded with them like Chuck Crumbo, I would know a lot more of these fine soldiers, and it would be a tremendous privilege.
In lieu of that, I will from time to time share correspondence from Capt. Smith.
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I originally wrote this comment in response to one above it, but I ended up unpublishing that one, because it was so obnoxious I couldn’t stand to look at it, and I definitely didn’t want James Smith’s family seeing it.
Basically, it was some anonymous jerk sneering at Capt. Smith as a JAG officer who would never get close to hostile fire, ending with “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that his biggest hardship is when the Officer’s Club ran out of his brand of scotch.”
You know, THAT kind of jerk — the blogosphere is full of them.
For the next one like him, let me explain two things.
First, there’s not a thing wrong with being a JAG officer. I admire them for lending their skills to their country.
Second, Capt. Smith is not a JAG officer.
H USED TO BE a JAG officer. He was a captain then, too. Then the war started.
He did something unheard-of. He asked to join the infantry. They said no. He kept asking. He finally got bucked up to some guy in Washington who said, OK hot shot, you want to be a real soldier? Resign your commission and go to Basic.
So he did. In his late 30s, he became a regular dogface running alongside 18-year-olds, and keeping up just fine. He went through advanced infantry training. He made sergeant. He kept training. He became a lieutenant. Then he started working his butt off training to become what he most wanted to be: an infantry platoon leader. He trained at Fort Benning for that.
Then he lost his chance to lead a platoon into battle by being promoted to captain. This was just a few months back, but they gave him a new assignment, a tough one. He and a noncom would become a special team to be embedded in an Afghan unit, out fighting the Taliban. He took on this new assignment with relish, undergoing all sorts of special language and weapons training out at Fort Riley, Kansas, while most of the 218th was in Camp Shelby, Miss.
I think he’s arriving at his new assignment today, or perhaps yesterday, leaving behind the neat hominess of Camp Phoenix — no more visiting with his former JAG buddies (whom, you will notice, HE does not sneer at, even though he has gone on to become a true warrior).
Attaboy, way to support the troops, Bill B!
I bet that you even have a yellow ribbon magnet on your car.
Do you really think that Rep. Smith couldn’t find a better way to “pad his resume” without being separated from his young family for a year; living in a dusty, primitive, violent hellhole across the globe; giving up a large portion of his income; neglecting his law clients; and, missing political activities?
Thanks, RTH, but I went back and unpublished that, for reasons I state above in my rewritten response.
So now if someone disagrees with Brad, he pulls their comments… I must have wrote something that he couldn’t refute so he just decided to make it go away.
Ready to Hurl: I do support the soldiers, I also did my TOURS during the first round over there, did you or Brad? More than likely the two of you just sit on your fat asses here in the states and spew your opinions to anyone who would listen. Smith isn’t endouring any more hardship than any other soldier over there who left a family at home.
Everyone knows that a politician can gain more from military service than just about anything else with the voting public.
BTW Brad, if you knew anything about the military other than what a JAG officer tells you… one can turn down a promotion. Smith could have stayed a Lt. and led his troops into battle.
I’ll stop here, since Comrade Warthen will probably pull this post as well.
No, I’ll leave it up, as it gives a hint of the pettiness of the one I unpublished.
Nothing like a good example, even if the exemplar himself still doesn’t understand what he did wrong.
This gives me the chance to explain (again) one other thing he apparently has trouble taking in — that upon his promotion Capt. Smith took on something different from being a platoon leader, something that, if anything, is an even greater challenge.