Sometimes we forget them

I had occasion to visit Washington D.C. this weekend, and while walking among the white headstones at Arlington National Cemetery I decided I needed to write this post about a recent trip I took to the United Arab Emirates.

I traveled to Dubai in the UAE last month for a Business Branding Network Executive Board meeting. On the way over and back my flights out of Atlanta were completely packed. More than half of the passengers were U.S. military personnel. There were folks from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines (hope I didn’t forget a branch). It was fundamentally a cross section of our younger population. Every race, creed, color, gender and size was represented. Traveling internationally these days is truly a bonding experience, so we got to know each other. Together we went through primary security, stood in line for sign-in at the gate, went through final security at the gate, waited together to board, sat together (and I mean together) on the plane and finally stood in line again for passport control.

I’m writing this because I was struck by the level of professionalism among these men and women. To a person, they were well dressed (mostly in civilian clothes), well groomed, articulate and completely polite. As an ex-G.I., I spoke with a number of them as I was curious about life in the military today. A good number of them are working on continuing education either in military classes or universities. They are proud of what they do in the service and spoke of the opportunities to change jobs if they were qualified for the training. Not once did I hear any whining, despite the fact some of them were headed to duty stations in garden spots on the frontier in Iraq and Afghanistan. God bless them. They are all volunteers and we are very fortunate to have them. 

It dawned on me if anyone wanted to militarily impact the interests of our country anywhere in the world, they would have to deal with these folks.

I wouldn’t like their chances.