"THIS IS WAR. PEOPLE ARE DYING."

By Ed Evans, MGySgt. USMC (Ret.)

"THIS IS WAR. PEOPLE ARE DYING." -- Alonzo Lundsford, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant (Ret.), Victim of 2009 Fort Hood terrorist attack

For my Marine friends, the double tragedy of this cowardly shooting in Chattanooga is that these four Marines were members of the 4th Battalion, 14th Marines, 4th Marine Division. While a couple of Marine units have been known as "Dark Horse", this unit was the Dark Horse of Fallujah, the heroes of Fallujah who set a record for number of mortar rounds fired, taking the city that couldn't be taken from the enemy. This unit also served in Afghanistan. These Marines didn't deserve to be cowardly slaughtered, unarmed, like this.

We must change our strategy. This is war. A stronger stand overseas and armed military at home. They go armed overseas, why not at home, where the war has now come to us?
I make the point that when the Fort Hood Army Major took his personal weapon on base and began to murder soldiers, they were unarmed. When a female Army MP got to the scene with her weapon, she took him down immediately. One woman less than five foot tall, with her weapon, took him down. Name any terrorist murder scene with a shooter, and one person with a weapon would have stopped it when it started. 

This is war. People are dying.

We know the enemy and we know who supports them.  Yet we do not properly equip those trained to do the fighting.  We don't go after them with victory in our throat, and that is at our own peril. Our pansy leadership today, dragging ROEs, collateral damage issues, bean-counting practices onto the battlefield are ultimately responsible for our cemeteries of warrior dead, and the fact that we face an enemy inside our gates, and that we stand so deathly close to losing our God-given freedoms and liberties.

This is war.  People are dying.