Remember

By lex, on September 11th, 2011 Remember

Never forget.

Today is the day we tell our stories. You have heard it before, but this is mine:

We had left Pearl Harbor three days earlier, our weapons unloaded as were a thousand sailors and officers to make room for a Tiger Cruise: Fathers, sons and brothers, mothers and daughters, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews. They would spend the last six days of our deployment with us, enjoying their exposure to an aircraft carrier at sea.

We had returned after a six month deployment from the brutal summertime heat of the Arabian Gulf, our air wing patrolling the Southern No Fly Zone in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, getting shot at, and shooting back in that desultory but deadly way that we had by then become accustomed to. Not really at war. Not really at peace. Always waiting for the first blow to land.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex