5-21-25

I’ve got to tell you…..sometimes there is a logjam that just can’t seem to be

broken….and then that one voice….that one personality…..that one person with

the strength of will and courage of their convictions steps into the mix and the

logjam breaks up…..

I’ll never forget one such guy…..Baghdad, 2004…..my team was attached to an

Infantry Battalion in central Baghdad under the 1 st Cavalry Division…..we were

outside the wire virtually every day…..no matter what the cause of the

time…..cordon and search….raids….good will patrols….or visiting a local school

to establish rapport….we always had an interpreter…..my team had two terps in

Baghdad, one of whom was an Iraqi bodybuilder named Yousef…..he was in fact

one of the biggest dudes I ever met…..roughly 6’4-5 and well over 300

pounds…..his arms were as big as my thighs….I’m not small by any stretch but

Yousef could make a guy feel anemic just standing next to him….he had one of

those lantern jaws and a sharp gaze that could freeze a guy in his tracks….but he

would crack a smile and laugh just as quick….he was a also a Christian and I

remember learning that he taught himself much of his English by having two

Bibles, one in english and one in arabic and going back and forth between the two.

…..it made his day when I had Charlene help me to get a Gold’s Gym sweatshirt

for him…..in 4XL if I recall….

One particular day we were in a spot in which the Deputy Division CDR, a 1-star,

showed up….he was walking past us when he saw Yousef standing next to me

wearing this maxed out old flak jacket and looking huge….the General stopped in

his tracks and said “who are you?”….without blinking Yousef just pointed at me

and said “his bodyguard” to which the General said “I believe that” and walked on

shaking his head.

As good as it was to have Yousef working as an interpreter I’ve got to say that he

was legendary when it came time to get folks to do what was needed. It didn’t take

much…..more than once I saw him wade into an angry Arabic mob and just say

some emphatic words….and folks just did whatever he said. Traffic jams were

notorious….and being still on a Baghdad street was a tactical no-no…..truly

dangerous….one particular day near one of the worst sections of a Baghdad slum

the traffic was so snarled and congested my teams gun trucks were literally

jammed in and could not move….I was out on foot yelling and pointing my

weapon at certain drivers who did not seem to get my sense of urgency….until one

them got wide-eyed looking past me and I turned to see Yousef moving in between

the cars and whatever he said was certainly matched by the immediate clearing of

the intersection……things like that happened all the time….to include a major

operation we conducted with a reinforced Company in the Sadr City section of

Baghdad….with shots being fired and explosions going off Yousef took a bullhorn

and got over 150 civilians into a safe zone and under control…..man, we had some

great Yousef stories…..he made a huge difference for our team…..pun intended….

I tell you this story because it was an example of one man making a difference.

…..one man can in fact make a difference….and he (or she for that matter) doesn’t

have to be the size of my giant friend Yousef….

But there have been times in history where everything changed because one person

stood….one person stood and rallied others….and they stood in the gap and made

a difference…..you’ve all heard the story of the Spartan warriors who stood in the

gap against the mighty persian army….but have you ever heard about what it

meant….it was bigger than the one battle…..the mighty Persian Army decided it

wanted to take Greece…..King Xerxes was considered to be a living god among

the Persians and he wanted to conquer the known world in his own name…..his

army was vast and numbered in the millions…..Xerxes marched on Greece which

at the time was not one nation, Greece was a bunch of city-states, each with their

own culture and governments….they were not united…..Sparta was just one of

those city -states and it was a warrior culture…..the men of Sparta were trained

from childhood to be fighters, and when Xerxes came marching the King of Sparta

was a man named Leonidas….but the laws of Sparta were rigid and the war was

coming at a time when the Spartans were in the middle of their holiest months and

the Spartan senate forbade Leonidas from marshalling the army….but the law

allowed the King to muster 300 troops at any given time without approval….so

that is what he did…..small groups of other soldiers from other cities came but the

leader of the whole tiny band of warriors was Leonidas…..and he chose his

battlefield…..a place the Greeks called the Hot Gates….at a pass near the sea

called Thermopylae….it was so narrow and confined that the might of the Persian

Army was constrained and could only fight a few at a time in waves…..there are a

few quotes from that battle that are considered to be accurate and were recorded for

history…..in one instance a Persian emissary approached the Spartans and

demanded they surrender, saying, “don’t you know that our archers are so many

that their arrows will block out the sun?!” to which one of Leonidas’ captains

(Dienekes) said “that is good. Then we will fight in the shade today”…..epic…..but

the most famous, and true line, is when another emissary from Xerxes called on the

Leonidas to surrender and lay down his weapons and Leonidas said simply “Molon

Labe” which means “come and take it” …..the small band of Spartans and their

allies fought for 7 days and put such a beating on the Persians that the stories have

lasted for centuries….and yes, eventually the overwhelming size and force of the

Persian army was able to surround the Spartans and they were wiped out…..but

their fight is said to have galvanized the rest of the Greek City states….and they

rallied to the fight….and they became allied together…..and the Persians were

turned back completely and Xerxes was defeated…..and Greece became a unified

nation…..and from Greece we found the origins of what is now the western

world…..and the origins of democracy…..and some say, that it was because

Leonidas and his 300 stood in the hot gates that we have a democracy in America

today……think about that….if Leonidas had just accepted the idea that Xerxes

was too big, the mission too tough, the battle too large, we might all be speaking

Persian Farsi right now and listening to what the Ayatollah’s have to say…..one

man, rallied a few, the few stood in the gap, the world was changed…..just like

that…..

I say all of this because of some current events that are unfolding that are bigger

than the one person whose name is on the fight…..There’s a story right now

coming out of the State of Maine…..a great story….we’ve been keeping you

posted on it…..Maine State Representative Laurel Libby, one person, standing in

the gap for the girls of her state….she will be on the show again later today….but

her stand has been epic…..she dared to go against the grain and stand up to the

political powers that be in her state and say that transgender boys playing in girls

sports was wrong….how dare she?!....she was officially censured by her State

House and forbidden to speak or vote on the floor of the House where she was duly

elected to represent tens of thousands of Mainers…..and she told them to pound

sand and took it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and

yesterday the Supreme’s ruled in her favor and she is back at work…..one woman,

standing in the gap…..and she achieved a national legal determination that on the

one hand appears to have been her personal win, but it was so much more…..it was

a win for all of the girls in Maine, it was a win for the Republicans in Maine who

supported her, but even bigger than that – the decision was a win for every elected

official in the entire United States who has ever been silenced for daring to speak

up….the mob told her to be quiet and she said “no”…..the mob told her to sit down

and she said “no”…..the Governor, the Speaker of the House, even the Court

system in her state, all told her to get in line and be a good little sheep…..but she

chose to push back and she went all the way to the Supreme Court and proved that

standing in the gap still works…..

We need that kind of leadership right this very day…..we need it for the way

forward…..We need to know that our elected officials will evidence the strength of

will and serve as statesmen…..

Break the logjams……make a difference…..do it and you’ll be a hero…..

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!