The small aircraft swooped down low over the Caribbean Sea in its approach pattern. From my seat, I couldn’t see what was ahead, and then all of a sudden I saw the waves breaking right at the edge of the runway. I was about to land on the small island of Cayman Brac.
As I took off from Grand Cayman Island heading to the Brac, I felt the need to unload. I’m just so perplexed as to how it is that less than a week ago, the second biggest Islamic terrorist attack in America’s history took place in Orlando, and the narrative is all about gun control? Matter of fact, over at the Clueless News Network, Anderson Cooper was interviewing Florida’s Attorney General and he made it about support to the gay community. Where in God’s name do these people come from?
I am reading a book by CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief, Chris Mitchell, called “ISIS, Iran, and Israel,” and the book is very telling. Omar Mateen followed the call to arms of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared Caliph. Forty-nine dead and some fifty-three wounded as a result of the ISIS efforts to not just establish a caliphate, first since 1924, but to call militant Islamic jihadists to take up arms, wherever they are.
We have a president too damn busy lecturing us about how we should react, while displaying abject ignorance in attacking political enemies, not the ones who enacted this heinous and savage assault. Perhaps President Obama, Anderson Cooper, and the entire progressive socialist left should go back and read Graeme Wood’s piece written in The Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants.” My Wood deduced after his research and interviews:
The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure-seekers, drawn largely from disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, ‘the Prophetic methodology’, which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail.
Instead of President Obama, the brilliant constitutional scholar, professing now to be some scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, we should listen to the fella that has a PhD in Islamic Studies, al-Baghdadi. Nah, the leftist spin masters enabled by such brilliant minds as the creative writer Ben Rhodes and the complicit liberal progressive media seeks to demonize Americans’ Second Amendment rights. This is even more evidence that progressive socialists can not and will not keep America safe. Their maniacal ideological agenda forces them to see the right of someone such as myself, a law abiding citizen, to legally own, possess — keep and bear — a semi-automatic rifle as the real danger. Here we are, how many days after the horrific Orlando jihadist attack, and not a damn thing has been done to ISIS and their sanctuary of Raqqa, Syria. And if that doesn’t disturb you, then you are a disgrace to the ideal of American strength.
But, as the plane taxied over to the airfield building and I set my foot upon the terra firma of Cayman Brac, my focus shifted. I am here with the Dive Pirates Foundation whose mission is:
Based upon camaraderie, compassion, freedom to dive, and the Code of Conduct, Dive Pirates will support, train, equip, and provide dive travel to individuals with disabilities through Classified Scuba Diving. Their vision is that Dive Pirates will create a community of Disabled Divers that will dive and travel in the mainstream world of Scuba Diving through education and overcoming obstacles.
I will be diving with U.S. Army Captain Marlene Krpata, who is now an Aerospace Engineer, but is a combat veteran and single amputee from her service in Iraq. See, today when I got to meet Marlene, all the other nonsense just faded into oblivion. And so it was with meeting all of the gathered selected divers that Dive Pirates is helping to find peace, respite, in the beautiful underwater world that scuba diving offers. Every service is here: Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines. And what Dive Pirates does is to allow expert instructors the opportunity to share their passion and skills in developing the same with others, and freeing them.
I’m going to enjoy my three days here away from the insanity that is taking root in my America. I need to be with real Americans who have dedicated their lives, and their bodies, to preserve our freedom. I need to be around individuals who do not see being confined in a wheelchair as an obstacle; they seek not pity. I need some serious “bottom time” and just allow the sea to surround me and rejuvenate me and my efforts to be the “Guardian of the Republic.”
