Above is a photo of Oscar presenting a PGR flag to Rob Ochsner (AHK sner) in his parents’ driveway. Rob said that the PGR is well known among the troops and, from my point of view, that was the very best thing he could have said to us.

His brother Jim was the first Illinois PGR KIA mission. His wife is also a soldier. So his parents display one gold and two blue stars.

The mission went well. Four of us escorted him 25 miles from O’Hare to the Harley dealer near my home in Lake Bluff where another two dozen of us stood in flaglines. The larger group then continued another 20 miles to his family home in Beach Park. There were presentations at the airport, the Harley dealer and the family home.

This was my first “welcome home” mission. I don’t think I can describe the significance of this soldier’s family. His father served as a Green Beret in Vietnam and has been active in the local PGR for years. This mission was important to many of us. PGR member and family friend Drew Berendts traveled from Seattle, Washington to participate. Go to the forum and read the tributes there to understand how we felt.

We rode from Lake Bluff to Beach Park with the rear pegs down – a recognition of his absent brother. During that ride, the TV news cameraman sat in the back of the car shown below and must have gotten good images of us in parade, but they didn’t make the broadcast. The driver (pictured) suffered the only glitch in the mission – with his engine running, he locked himself out. (Efforts to get back inside is show in subsequent pictures.) You couldn’t blame him – there were many suspicious-looking bikers all around him.

A couple years ago, Jim (my step-son) was sitting at a big dinner table with my local family: mother, married brother, two married sisters. They had had little direct exposure to our military before my marriage to Robin. Jim was 82^nd Division, same as Rob Ochsner. Jim had just returned from six weeks of providing security in Afghanistan during the first national election ever to be conducted there.

Naturally, there were questions about his experience. After enough prodding, Jim told my innocent family about an ambush of his platoon. They fought back and, without taking any casualties, captured the enemy.

“We had them squat with their hands behind their heads and they were crying and everything.”

Someone asked, “Well, are you sure you got the right guys?”

“Oh yeah, a few minutes before that, they were trying to kill us.”

That comment was followed by silence from everyone.

I believe I could understand both sides. I understand the entirely counter-instinctive reaction to charge into gunfire when that must be done. And I certainly understand the cultural reflex to drop to one’s knees and hope for the best when the shooting starts. That is what most of the students at Virginia Tech did, and that is why they could be methodically executed. From all reports, other than the police, the only one who charged the shooter was a teacher who was a veteran.

In World War Two, essentially everyone in our country was part of the war effort. Except for China, ours is the largest active-duty military in the world at 1.5 million. Still, of a population of 300 million, that is only one-half of one percent. That means that some 95 percent of our population does not even have any active-duty family member. And since military volunteers come mainly from military families, I bet that 90 percent of our population does not have an active-duty relative.

And so those 90 percent have no first-hand understanding of war. They come to believe that soldiers should only be used for hurricane relief and that if they must fight an enemy, that in itself constitutes a failure.

Rob Ochsner the day of our mission: "War is not a game of tag," he said. "People are going to die. That is the way it goes. I mean, we have lost more people in other wars throughout history. I think we have gotten off lucky that only 4,000 soldiers have died."

90 percent of our population flirts with the idea that no war is ever justified or moral. But war is not a failure of diplomacy. It is the ultimate resort of diplomacy. Diplomacy that eschews war is like an auto tire without any air pressure.

A week earlier, that same newspaper reported:

The surge of troops has allowed U.S. soldiers to control the cities and freed troops like Ochsner's unit to go out and chase the bad guys.

"It freed up guys like me to go out and attack them and hit them in their safe havens," he said.

Ochsner said they have taken car bombers and their factories, the guys who use chlorine to improve explosives. This has given rise to more CLCS, concerned local citizens.

"The local people were afraid to stand up to them. They had been beaten down," he said.

Ochsner's unit didn't do any civic operations like building schools.

"We just killed bad guys," he said.

Now the people are standing up for themselves, and they are training more Iraqi soldiers.

"They are out there doing what we are doing," he said of the Iraqis.

He said the foreign fighters' networks have been shut down, and they can't return to the cities because the surge troops prevented them. "We've pushed al-Qaida all the way up north," Ochsner said, noting that they also discovered several atrocity sites.

"We've got them on the run," he said.

Without First Sergeant Robert Ochsner and others like him, there would be no answer to terrorism.

Sure we could tighten airport screening. Instead of defeating 9 out of 10 attempts, we could (at some expense) defeat 99 out of 100 attempts. But, of course, that means we must accept that 1 out of 100 attempts will fly an airplane into a building. And that does not even address port security. And what about Mexican border security?

As every coach of every sport knows, you can’t win if you only play defense. The 82^nd Airborne Division plays offense.

The bumper sticker? Juuust a co-inky-dink.

Lake Bluff photos

Beach Park photos

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