Freedom isn't free

I'm making this blog post so that I'll never forget today, and so that all the people I know and love who know and love me back who feel like the war isn't worthwhile can maybe change their minds for a moment or two.

For people who think soldiers never cry.

For the families and friends and loved ones who have lost someone to this endless war.

If it's pointless- then let's point it in a direction.

Because people are dying.


I hate saying that it never mattered to me before, but it didn't. It wasn't real, it wasn't here.

It is there.

But that makes what I'm writing even more important, even more essential

in hopes that maybe you can understand

that if we don't believe in the people who are getting sent out there

they'll come back in coffins

and if they don't come back
then the war comes here.

We'll see how many people think that our fight on terrorism is useless when it's knocking on their front door.

or when their 19 year old sons are lying absent in a coffin.

When other brave men who have been sent to hand a flag
the symbol of our country
the symbol of blood and stripes

that lifeless material

that so many give their lives FOR

folded neatly into the family's empty hands.

More than anything

I want you to know how beautiful it all was in spite of the tragedy.

How the boy scouts lined the streets with tears in their eyes saluting every car, the old woman who stood on her stoop clutching a lone flag to her body, holding onto the past when it was good, and virtuous and noble to die for what you loved.

How a flock of birds decided the moment the guns shot in their last salute to LCPL Carlos Aragon to fly into the air in a V.

How it felt to watch your husband's best friend, the man who slept beside yours, be lowered into the ground.

The silence and the sadness, and the piece of your soldier's life going with that one- so that you could ultimately live.

So that we could all live without serving another person's beliefs.

Not important enough still?

Want to voice your opinion?

If you thought it didn't matter now,
It surely won't matter in a country that's not free...

Well, I'm not sure what will change your mind.
I know
I've changed mine.

Freedom isn't free.
It's bought with blood, time, and talents, from men and women who love this country more than they love themselves.

God bless you and keep you wherever you serve
LCPL CARLOS ARAGON (19)
LCPL OLSEN