Special to WorldTribune.com

by Billy and Karen Vaughn

We are all familiar with the U.S. Marine Corps slogan “Looking for a Few Good Men.” America’s military has plenty of “good men.” Yet, what it lacks in spades are good leaders.

Recently we met former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the set of Hannity. We had spent most of our day scouring his newly released book, Duty, hoping to better understand the seeming total lack of leadership and direction our military has been subjected to in recent years. In all honesty, there were no revelations in Mr. Gates’s book. There were only confirmations of what we already know: our Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has turned his back on the men and women still fighting in Afghanistan.

“I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” writes Mr. Gates. As parents of a Navy SEAL killed in action, these are very difficult words to swallow.

In a warrior’s heart, if you don’t support his mission, you don’t support him. He is his mission.

How can our president send men and women to fight and die for a cause in which he does not believe? To do so is to spit in the face of the embattled warrior and every family member he or she leaves behind.

[Special Report: Egypt reports Al Qaida team fired Russian SAM at Apache helicopter ]

Also, if the president truly supports those who offer their lives on our behalf, he will most certainly provide a clear, concise strategy for success – also known as victory – whether he believes in the mission or not. This is the least our brave combatants deserve as they lace up their boots for yet another day or night of battle.

This family is most troubled by a question we have heard many times in the past few weeks: “Why did Mr. Gates wait until now to bear his soul on all of the troubling issues he dealt with?”

We too want an answer.

Since Mr. Gates left his post in 2011, 850 American soldiers have taken their last breath on the battlefields of Afghanistan. They were fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters bound to “Duty” and honor, fighting 7,000 miles away from all they loved and all those who loved them. While Mr. Gates settled comfortably into retirement with lips sealed, 850 families greeted flag-draped coffins.

In addition, from July, 2011 to September, 2012, more than 5,000 American soldiers returned home with grave wounds. As heartfelt as Mr. Gates’s words were regarding the reverence he has for our troops, he nonetheless left us struggling to understand why he waited so long to sound the alarm on this inept administration.

This nation had a right to know. We had a right to cast an informed vote in 2012. We should have been told that President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both acknowledged they had put career before the lives of our nation’s heroes… before the life of our only son.

We should have been told that our Vice President, the second in command of our military forces, had not made a sound decision on national defense in four decades. This is not a joke for us: There are no chuckles about “Uncle Joe’s ineptitude” around the dinner table of a fallen soldier.

Silence reigned and heroes died.

We are better than this.

Billy & Karen Vaughn are Gold Star parents of Special Operations Chief (SEAL) Aaron Vaughn, KIA 6 Aug 2011. Billy is the author of Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17. Read more at http://www.forourson.us.

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