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"Not for land, nor money;
not to build empires nor expand them; not for material
gain nor for power
but for something most of us have long forgotten, never
possessed, or selfishly disdain:
The selfless ideal that no man
should live under oppression or tyranny,
That freedom is not purchased
on the clean conference tables of the political elite;
That liberty is not leveraged
in back rooms or over elegant plates
By men who know nothing of honor and cannot, therefore,
comprehend it in another
Who know nothing of selflessness and consequently nothing
of soldiers.
That a man should be willing to
lay down his life for something greater than himself
... even for another who holds
in contempt the life of the man who would set him free
...
It escapes us utterly that man
can be so noble.
We disdain and fear it because
it is an indictment of our mediocrity.
For all our money and power we are small before such
men
Plaiting wreathes of false honor to be placed upon our
heads
Applauding ourselves for
their boots on the ground."
Geoffrey K. Mondello,
Boston Catholic Journal
Please ...
taken one precious moment
out of your busy day to breathe a prayer, one
single prayer — imploring
God to protect these selfless men who stand in "that small
deadly space" between fear and freedom, hatred and hope
— holding the value of a single life against that
terrible tolerance of death and that brutal tribute of suffering
exacted by, and emblematic of, radical Islam in Afghanistan
and abroad. You
have a stake in this
although you may know it not.
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