The Phoenix
The official Patch of the now inactive 16th Airborne Command and Control Squadron.
I’d never experienced a former employer shuttering its doors forever until a few weeks ago.
As a former member of the 16th Airborne Command and Control Squadron, I was ecstatic to make the trip up to my former home at Robins AFB, GA, with some colleagues for the official deactivation of my first operational unit. For 27 years, the 16 ACCS was one of just a handful of operational squadrons to fly the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, and I participated in multiple deployments with this mission during my 3 years in the unit.
When the guidon was finally sheathed by the group commander, I felt a wash of emotions ranging from pride to sadness. The Air Force is divesting the E-8C, and my beloved 16th was the first unit to shut down in the process.
For one last time, the past and present members of the 16 ACCS were able to let loose our squadron motto when led by the outgoing (and final) squadron commander:
“Phoenix Warriors…Light the Way!”
This is an incredibly fitting motto. The squadron was technically changed to an “inactive” status, which means although not assigned personnel or a mission, it has not been officially removed from the Air Force roster. In theory, she could be reactivated should our nation need her. This is not uncommon in Air Force history as many units have changed statuses throughout time.
So, after decades of “lighting the way” in training, exercises, deployments, and support worldwide to Combatant Commanders, the Phoenix has burned out. But you know what they say about phoenixes…they rise again. Perhaps she will come back for future endeavors.
I can’t help but correlate this metaphor in many ways to our nation and where she sits currently. In recent months I have felt an overwhelming sense that the light of the prosperous, free, and righteous country I grew up in is burning out faster than those of us who are desperately trying to save her can affect change.
There is a metastasizing cancer spreading throughout the country of oppression and immorality combined with the tyrannical attempt to blot out traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and thought. It has been fueled for years by forces bent on destruction of our good nation, complicit actors, and ignorance. The rot is so pervasive that there are rumblings about a “national divorce” - a notion that defies the “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s also a notion that, even when examined only slightly, yields seemingly insurmountable logistical, social, economic, and defense implications.
So how do we make it out on the other side intact? Is it possible with ever widening chasms of thought?
The states themselves inherently allow for a great variety of “flavors” and legislation. Local governments can further specify policy that is pertinent and useful for their citizens. Metropolitan centers need different policy than rural communities regarding public infrastructure, for example. Although this does not imply that individual morality should differ from the farmer to the urbanite, but that their day to day concerns vary based on environment. You can have a devout follower of Christ in a high rise the same as a steel mill, for example.
With the ever-growing threat of war due to finance and power struggles (inherently another major issue), we need to focus on fortifying the homeland. Although seemingly well-intended care packages often arrive on foreign shores when disaster strikes, our own people are suffering at home, and political moves are, at least on the surface, seemingly the only way to get American citizens the help they need. Billions in aid flow freely to all corners of the globe, but why not to our own people?
Nationalism in its truest sense is willing to maximize benefit to one’s own country, even to the detriment of others. Patriotism, on the other hand, involves vigorous support to one’s own country. The latter can be executed in such a way that promotes our own people and prosperity as the goal. This can certainly be found in international trade and commerce, but rather than perpetually engaging in a shoving match globally, trading in a manner that provides livelihood and needed goods rather than consumerism and greed is a noble possibility.
So, to my fellow patriots and countrymen, continue to light the way. May God lead our efforts. And perhaps a greater America will rise again.
-MJVW
https://www.robins.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3306700/16th-accs-27-year-history-comes-to-a-close-at-robins/