National Defense

National Defense
The Reader's Turn
9/1/2021
Updated:
9/1/2021

Last Monday was our monthly meeting of the Athens, Tennessee S.A.R. (Sons of the American Revolution). I am a member, courtesy of Allen Howard, who fought with George Washington when he was 18 years old. The Howard family came to Virginia in 1635 to find freedom and a better way of life than Britain had to offer.

Our meeting last Monday night was very enlightening. We had an Army colonel give us the blow-by-blow description of the American Airlines  B-767 airliner that was hi-jacked by Middle East Arabs and executed a suicide mission into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001. It was very well done by the Colonel, and the devastation was terrible. The Pentagon has 16-inch walls that prevented massive damage, but it was very bad at any rate.

As I Iistened to this and the other description of the damage to the New York City Twin Towers, I was again impressed of how a few foreigners could accomplish this brazen act of devastation on our America. It was sudden, totally devastating, and demoralizing to all Americans to see our beautiful country’s treasures and American lives lost to this act of total surprise and treachery from a foreign country from the other side of the world.

But we have not really prepared ourselves for a repeat, of even more devastation. I asked the Colonel, “Why didn’t we have a ground-to-air missile defense system?” He really did not know. Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital! We should be aware that foreign nationals would put our nation’s capital on the top of their list to destroy, especially the Pentagon where all of the United States war plans originate.

A defensive missile system is so simple. If the missile system’s radar is scanning the skies for a possible attack, when a radar target stops moving, it means that it is either coming at you or moving directly away from you. If the image becomes larger, it is time to act and fire the missile. It seems so simple to me to be prepared for an attack in this socialist/communist world of ours when our enemies would love to kill us all.

China did a pretty good job of doing just that, with the Chinese Communist Party Germ Warfare Lab manufacturing an invisible virus that killed 700,000 Americans and has yet to be accused. All I have to say is that it is time to “Wake Up America! We have the greatest country in the world with freedom and justice for All!” Let’s treasure it and take care of our country and not let our wonderful way of life be taken away from us and our children and grandchildren!

Jack Ferrell

Tennessee