Soap Box

​December 7, 1941 was a bleak, gray day in coastal North Carolina. Our family was at my grandparents� house on the Carolina Beach Road and we gathered around Granddaddy�s big floor model radio to listen to a scratchy overseas broadcast informing us that the Japanese had bombed our Naval Base in Pearl Harbor.

I was five-years-old, much too young to grasp the true gravity of the situation, but I knew that something very serious had happened, and my formative years were during the Second World War.

Wilmington, North Carolina played a strategic part in the war effort. There was a shipyard that built Liberty ships and Wilmington is a port city and oil tankers and cargo ships navigated from the Port of Wilmington out through the mouth of the Cape Fear River and across the Atlantic to service our troops.

Many of them were sunk by German U-Boats just off our coast, sometimes, it was said that you could see the fires of battle from our beaches.

This was in the days before television and satellite technology and we never knew if the Nazis would attempt to bring the war on shore.

We were very vigilant. We had blackouts, air raid drills and the top half of the car headlights were painted black to keep them from being visible from the air.

I learned a lot of valuable lessons during that period of my life, but none more valid and valuable than the fact that only two things protect American; that is the grace of Almighty God and the United States Military.

It was that way in 1941, it's that way in 2016 and it will remain that way as long as America remains a free and sovereign nation.

For America to maintain the respect and fear to keep it safe it simply must have, not just a good military, but the best military on Planet Earth, a fact that seems to escape our current president and many members of our legislative body.

Obama's disrespect for our military has not manifested itself in words, but actions as all branches of our service have been reduced in numbers and military equipment under his administration.

Our best and most battle-hardened officers have been retired in favor of officers who are more politically favorable to Obama.

At the same time our military capabilities are being decimated, the nations who represent a clear and present threat to us are building up and better equipping theirs.

We have been forced into a kind of warfare we've never had to face in the War on Terror. The enemy does not wear uniforms and they hide among the civilian population, insuring heavy collateral damage with any kind of mass operation.

There are ways to fight this war but it has to be administered by seasoned military personnel, not politicians who refuse to bomb an ISIS fuel truck for fear of killing an innocent driver. Would an innocent driver be hauling fuel for ISIS in the first place?

Politicians who turn back planes loaded with bombs for fear of doing damage to the environment.

Politicians who refuse to even call the enemy by his proper name.

I don't know which way this election will go, but I hope and pray that whoever wins the election will realize the dire need to rebuild our military and get about the task while there is still time left to do it.

And one component alone is not enough, we need the other half, we need to fervently seek the grace of Almighty God.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels