The camaraderie that exists in the military is unlike any other.  In particular, I miss the deep beer-soaked  philosophical discussions with my fellow young, inexperienced, infantry lieutenants.  Such discussions usually ended in one of two ways, i.e., hilarity or moroseness.  Most often, we ended with the hilarity that everything we said or did was hysterically funny.  Sometimes however, we became morose and reflected on the deadly business we were trained to complete.

A common subject was what command would we give if we were hopelessly over-powered by the enemy.  Universally, we felt our final command to the troops would be ATTACK, hoping to go out in a glorious hail of gunfire and hopefully taking some of those “sorry bast__ds” with us!

After all, that was entirely consistent with our high school coaches whose mantra was “the best defense is a good offense.”  And, are coaches ever wrong?

So, what would I do if I found myself being followed at night by a “crazy-ass cracker” or anybody else, who has a gun and has the drop on me?  If I believed he only wanted to rob me, I would probably comply, unless I felt I could overwhelm him somehow.  If I believed he planned to kill, I would absolutely ATTACK and hope for the best.  Isn’t that what the Army taught me?  Isn’t that what my high school coaches taught me?

Barry Goldwater once said “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”
Extreme measures in defense of my physical liberty is also no vice.
Attacking an attacker is no vice.