Dedication

Dear Editor(This is a letter to the Editor of the RhinoTimes),

Something not at all out of the ordinary happened over the weekend. A 47-year-old US Army sergeant major shipped out to Iraq for a year-long deployment, after asking for and getting permission to delay his scheduled April retirement.

The proverbial twist: He’s Michael Jordan’s older brother, James Jordan.

To demonstrate the liberal media’s bias, has anybody reported this fact? Of course not. The soon-to-be-extinct liberal media would rather focus on soldiers looking to escape duty in Iraq.
However, stories like that of Sgt. Maj. Jordan bring home the broader truth about the American military: It’s an all-volunteer force, and most who serve in it love and take enormous pride in their jobs.

Jordan joined the Army after three years of ROTC in high school. At 36, he went to airborne-training school, usually the domain of soldiers in their teens and early 20s. Now the senior noncommissioned officer in his brigade, he’s responsible for 2,450 soldiers in a unit that oversees telephone and satellite systems.

“We are doing things, and it requires leaders to do certain things,” Jordan said of his decision to delay his retirement. “That’s what I am, a leader.”

Of course, one need not look to the sibling of a sports star to witness the commitment of the US military. Just look at the reenlistment rates: Of the Army’s 10 active-duty divisions, nine are exceeding reenlistment goals by 5 percent or more.

That’s the real story.

Donald Bernstein