Young, but not for Obama

By Barry Yeoman
The Independent / Sept. 3, 2008

This week, as Nick Ochsner attends the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., the Elon University sophomore can’t listen to all the pro-military speeches without thinking about his father. Sgt. 1st Class Jim Ochsner, a special forces intelligence specialist stationed at Fort Bragg, died in November 2005 in Afghanistan. He was 36, and it was his fourth tour of duty in the country.

The elder Ochsner was on a mission to distribute supplies to Afghanis in Paktika Province near Pakistani border. Ochsner normally drove the Humvee, but on that day, his son says, “he threw the keys at someone else and they switched seats.” As the vehicle headed off, a roadside bomb detonated under the left rear tire, delivering a massive head injury to Ochsner, who died instantly. Everyone else in the vehicle survived.

Before his father’s death, Nick Ochsner enthusiastically favored the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Supporting U.S. military missions was an article of faith in his childhood home outside Fayetteville. Losing his father, he says, only deepened that conviction. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, Nick, your father was killed. Surely you’re against the war.’ It’s absolutely the opposite,” he says. “We have men and women who knew what they were doing when they volunteered for the service, and who have now sacrificed for your and [my] freedom. To withdraw without completing the mission would be a disgrace to them and a slap in the face of their families.”

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