Pride doesn’t deflect bullets

The U.S. Army may be looking for a few good men; in the Marine Corps, soldiers would settle for a few basic supplies.

At least one Marine has discovered when Uncle Sam is stretched thin, you can rely on mom.

Big Lake resident Joanne Casqueira’s 20-year-old Marine son and his 10-person battalion are scheduled to head to Iraq in September. It will be Alex Casqueira’s second tour of duty there. During his first tour, he realized there were deficiencies in the equipment allocated to each Marine.

When Alex Casqueira learned he’d be deployed to the Middle East again — this time in charge of 10 other Marines — he asked his mom if she could put out a donation jar at Sears in Wasilla where she works. It’s a basic, grass-roots effort to help raise the money Alex needs to not only outfit himself, but his battalion members, for their tour of duty in the callous and dangerous land so far away from his home in Alaska.

Joanne, a Marine mom through and through, is doing much more as she tries to raise the $11,000 needed. Her son serves proudly, and we are proud of him and his family, and the supplies he wants are hardly considered luxuries in the harsh Middle East during wartime. Things like new boots adequate to the job and a GPS wristwatch that could mean the difference between being killed by enemy insurgents and finding one’s way back to a friendly base are examples of the supplies Alex Casqueira says soldiers need. Overall, each soldier could be equipped for about another $1,000, which may not seem much, but is too expensive for a young U.S. Marine making $1,100 a month.

While Joanne works to make her son and his battalion more safe, she is also asking a very valid question: Why can’t the federal government allocate sufficient funds to the military so the young men and women it puts in harm’s way can be properly outfitted to meet the dangers they face?

We wonder the same.

Instead of putting itself in the position of explaining away a $640 toilet seat, why shouldn’t the Department of Defense be proudly showing how it has made outfitting its military men and women with state-of-the-art, fitted equipment its No. 1 priority, along with the weapons and military vehicles needed to give them more than a fighting chance of coming home again.

How many U.S. taxpayers would complain if the federal government spent equivalent funds on its volunteer soldiers compared to the high-paid, highly controversial private “security forces” with whom it contracts in Iraq?

We are proud of our local servicemen and women who put themselves in harm’s way to protect our freedom and the freedom of others around the world. We’re equally proud of the strong and glorious military tradition Alaska has and continues to cultivate. The Casqueiras are a good example of this.

Politics have no place in determining the best equipment used for fighting a war, but published reports have made it clear our soldiers are often tangled in the red tape of bureaucracy and politics, and it is no match for the enemy’s IEDs.

Alex is a patriotic soldier; one of the few and the proud. As Valley residents, we are grateful to all of our military men and women, serving near and far. We want for them what Joanne wants for her son — the best possible equipment to raise the odds he will safely return to the Valley.

To help Alex and his battalion, see the contact information with the story in today’s Valley Life section. To help everyone else, express your opinions to Congress.