A military veteran on a rant...

[IrishEyes]

Just another thing that has been bugging me lately. You guys are such an excellent sounding board, that I can't help but share.

How many of our members have served in the military? How many have family members that have served? Have any of your family died from military service (like fighting in a war)? What about your friends?

Directly to the current (or former) military members...
When you joined, was it a choice?
If so, did you enter the military with the knowledge that you might have to go to war?
Were you involved in any wars, battles, or actions as a result of your military service?
Did you support your government's reasons for being in that situation?

The reasons for my questions are simple. I hear so many people say "Bring our troops home", and "Our boys shouldn't have to die over there". Quite frankly, it makes me mad. When I joined the Navy, I did it by choice. I wanted to learn a trade, I wanted to see more of the world, I wanted to serve my country. I joined during the first Gulf War, knowing fully well that I may end up in a battle situation. I wasn't hoping to kill anyone, but I did understand that if I got sent to a ship, and we got involved in the war, people would die because of me. While I wasn't all that thrilled with the idea of taking a life, I still joined. I also understood that there was a very real possibility that I may be the one that died. I knew that going in. I still joined. It was a chance that I was willing to take, and I felt that it was something that I really needed to do. Most everyone I knew that joined felt the same way. We didn't want to die, but were ready to do so if it came to that.

Was I more patriotic than people are today? Was I just a dreamer? Was I very idealistic? Was I wearing rose-colored glasses? I just don't get the "Those poor kids shouldn't have to die" line, when people are given a choice to join, they know that the military can go into a war, and they know that wars often lead to death. Frankly, while the GI Bill may be an incentive to join the service, I don't think that risking your life for $40,000 is worth it, unless it is something that you really want to do. And if it is something that you really want to do, why are there so many people back home complaining about it?

[Tormod]

Some difficult question...I'll try:

Originally Posted by IrishEyes

How many of our members have served in the military? How many have family members that have served? Have any of your family died from military service (like fighting in a war)? What about your friends?

I was drafted (like everyone in Norway). Due to astma I was placed in the transport division of the infantry, but got a draft exemption while I was studying.

Six years later I refused to do military service and became a conscientious objector (technically on grounds of pacifism, but the real reason was that I did not wish to submit into the incredible bureacracy that is the Norwegian Army.

Most of my friends either did the service or did civil service (like myself). I know a couple of people who refused any kind of service and ended up in jail for it.

Nobody I know where killed nor wounded in action, but a friend's brother shot himself in the army.

The reasons for my questions are simple. I hear so many people say "Bring our troops home", and "Our boys shouldn't have to die over there". Quite frankly, it makes me mad.

I understand your sentiment. I don't know about the second Gulf War but the first had a general draft. A lot (I don't have the figures but it was enough to notice it) of students from my college were drafted.

When everyone volunteer, I also think it's acceptable to think that they have done this willingly, whether I support the act of war or not. However, if there was a draft things are different and it's hard to know who represents volunteers and who represents draftees.

Was I more patriotic than people are today? Was I just a dreamer? Was I very idealistic? Was I wearing rose-colored glasses?

I don't know. Maybe.

[Erasmus00]

I personally have a few friends in various branches of the armed services. I think that some people feel like this war wasn't necessarily justified. Certainly a lot of things that congress and the country were told at the begininng of the war turned out not to be true. As such, a lot of people don't know why we are still there. They think that people are being asked to lay there lives on the line, and they don't see a benefit.
-Will

[zadojla]

Irish -

I am not a veteran, but I am of the age to have been a Vietnam veteran. My three half-brothers and my mother are/were WW2 veterans, but no one was killed, or even saw combat.

During the Vietnam War, most soldiers were drafted. Most people did what I did. I used the rules to avoid service as long as possible. If I had been drafted, I would have fought.

I believe that if you join the military (voluntarily or involuntarily), there is an implicit acceptance of the possibility of fighting and dying. If you cannot accept that, then you must become a conscientious objector, flee the country, or go to prison.

The problem with the current Iraq war is that it appears to have been started for the wrong reasons, without a workable plan for getting out, and that we have been lied to throughout. I believe most people are much more patriotic now that they were 35 years, but all it will take to turn Iraq into another Vietnam (in terms of domestic unrest) is the institution of a draft. It might actually be worse now, because people my age were trying to protect themselves then, and now they would be protecting their children.

[niviene]

Irish So nice to hear from a female veteran... I just don't know many, personally.

Being in my profession, I have a ton of friends who either served previously or are currently serving who were called up to active duty. My brother is in the Navy, he is a Nuke. My father served in Nam, my father's brothers served, and my uncle served briefly before his dishonorable discharge for substance abuse... no surprise there.

I don't know much about the others, but I know my brother's choice was voluntary... he has a lot of pride in what he has chosen to do, and we are also very proud of him. I may not agree with the war, but I do respect his choice to serve. I would love for him to come home, but he is living the way he wants to live, and I wouldn't take that away for any selfish reason of my own. Hopefully he'll come home safely when his tour is over, if he chooses to, but he sure knew the risks involved when he signed up. None of us want our troops to die or suffer, but it's like a mother letting her child make his own choices for the first time - they might seem to be choices out of his hands, maybe dangerous, maybe mother thinks she "knows best", but eventually, you have to let the child think on his own. Otherwise, he's not really living. Let them go, and hope you have loved them enough and taught them well. My brother is out there, and I think of him as the best quality of human on the planet - compassionate, intelligent, physically amazing - I don't feel like signs reading "Bring our troops home" even apply to him, because he's just better than those signs. I know those kinds of signs are written out of fear by people who don't know better, and their intent is to express emotions that perhaps they don't understand or know how to control; but I know my brother, and I know my friends who are currently serving in Iraq, and I know they live and love to be the ones that we rely on to stay safe, at whatever cost it might be to themselves.

Irish, I don't think you are different than most of the recruits today. I think that same spirit and sense of pride is still there, and I'd like to believe that it always will be, for most. I feel that you share a similar outlook on it that my brother does, and I'm happy to know that people like you are the ones who are serving.

[IrishEyes]

Niv, that was really awesome. Thank you so very much. It is not often that I hear those sentiments from someone that is not in the service.

I think you're assessment is very correct though. I knew the risks, and that is exactly where I wanted to be. We were on the USS Enterprise when we first dropped bombs on Iraq back in '98. It was frightening, and exciting, and sad, all at the same time. My mother was glued to the tv every day, sending me "I saw your ship on CNN" e-mails every night. It was a very itneresting time of my life. And to be honest, except for missing the heck out of my (then only) 4 children, there is no place on earth that i would rather have been.

Anyhow, thanks again for your words. It's nice to see that someone appreciates what it takes, and that you support your brother (and by extension, I'm guessing other vets as well), even though you may not support the war. I agree that the signs are beneath him, but they don't quite reach the 'yellow ribbon' campaign fromt he first Gulf War. Those really made me angry too!

[Buffy]

Irish,

First, no I never served and never wanted to. But I also come from a "Navy" family that counts a rear admiral and a nuke sub captain. We've had one family member die (army air corps pilot in WWII), but no major/lasting wounds. Thus, I can't say I grew up on a family that was "hostile" to the armed services, although as liberal Californians all (but *Republican* liberals!), wars over the last half century have not been widely supported by us (Korea and Gulf War I and Kosovo are about it).

My main comments are that its unfortunate that:

1. Support for troops is equated with support for the war and vice versa, and
2. Patriotism is so strongly linked to being pro-war (whichever war you want to talk about).

I'd be careful to define being against the war with the pacifist-paternalistic "we don't want any more of our troops to die". In the case of Iraq II, there are a lot of us who have a viewpoint that is not well publicized because it is opposed by both "sides":

• We would have supported it under Clinton's above-board desire to liberate the Iraqi people with full support of the international community (but at the time this initiative was opposed by conservatives who did not want to do "nation building").
• We do not support the neo-cons belief that we can or even should "remake" the middle east according to our opinions of what a democracy should be, and the overarching "real" intent of the war and the way we are prosecuting reeks of this self-centered, egotistical world-view.
• Now that we're there, we should do whatever is necessary to clean up the mess (Colin Powell's "you break it, you've bought it" holds, even if you're not responsible for doing the breaking). "Withdraw immediately without considering the consequences" (which is not exactly what Congressman Murtha is proposing), is just as bad as blindly "staying the course" without a plan.
• The operation was completely unplanned beyond the taking of territory and breaking up the organized army. Its obvious that anyone with any experience could have put together a plan for getting people, supplies and materiel in place to do this and that it would take *lots* of people. To question the planning is met immediately with cries of "politics" but unless we're willing to talk about what ought to be done, we won't fix anything. It becomes especially worrying when the only reports are of vast amounts of money disappearing into both Iraqi and American corporate corruption.
• The troops on the ground are doing a *fantastic* job. They are winning friends and influencing people. The idiot administrators in the Pentagon rotate out entire battalions without any overlap/learning time to provide continuity, and even when those people are rotated back into combat, they go someplace else, rather than back to where they have pre-existing relationships with the locals that can be exploited (this month's Atlantic has a good story on this). We could be doing so much better with the great people we have in the armed forces, but its the meatheads at the white house and the civilian administrators at the pentagon that are getting in the way and messing everyone up (cf. McNamara and his MBA goons screwing up Vietnam). Saying that criticizing these strategies and policies is putting down the troops is patently offensive, but that's what you'll hear from Fox News.
• Setting goals--even soft ones--is an important part of the process. The arguments about timetables "soothing the enemy" are piffle. If Bush were a CEO and he told his shareholders that he refused to give them a timetable as to when the company would return to profitability and refused to disclose any strategy for doing so, he'd be out of a job by the next board meeting. Plenty of middle-of-the-road liberals *and* conservatives have said that with an open-ended commitment, we can't light a fire under the Iraqis to hurry up and figure out how to govern and police themselves.
• There *is* progress going on, and things are getting better, but the extremists insist on pointing to the rapidity or slowness perceived as justifying their polar points of view. Given the amount of people and money we are paying for this adventure and the fact that even the most extreme neo-con does not want to create a colony (just a compliant "partner"), its hard to see how it wouldn't get better over time. But this isn't a black and white "stay the course" versus "get out now": its an issue of being smart enough to modify the strategy and tactics as we go to actually achieve the goals we want to achieve.

This is a complicated situation, mostly run ragged by extremists on both the right and the left who like to simplify it down to exchanging epithets of "traitor!" and "baby killer!" Its not that simple, but it takes a lot of will and strength to rise above it and work *together* to figure out how to do the right thing.

Cheers,
Buffy

[infamous]

Originally Posted by Buffy

This is a complicated situation, mostly run ragged by extremists on both the right and the left who like to simplify it down to exchanging epithets of "traitor!" and "baby killer!" Its not that simple, but it takes a lot of will and strength to rise above it and work *together* to figure out how to do the right thing.

Cheers,
Buffy

Excellent post as usual Buffy, it is very true that the question is not so simple as Right or Left , BTW; Good to see you back in action here at hypography..................................Infy

[Buffy]

Oh and I've also got quite a few friends who's kids are over there now. Some are quite worried about them in addition to being against the war, but none of them have been anything but supportive of their choice to join it, unlike some of the families I saw when I was a kid where the parents would disown their children for demonstrating against the Vietnam War.

When I talk to these kids though home on leave, they're awfully conflicted. They still see the benefit of what they're doing and I have yet to see any who have questioned their decisions to join up, but they are really mad at "the idiots in the Pentagon." They can see what ought to be done, but their hands are tied. Its sad. My comment above about moving people around has been published in the press, but one of my friend's sons did a full tour in Iraq, and then they swapped places with a division in Afghanistan, where their minimal pidgin Iraqi-inflected Arabic was virtually useless among the Pushtuns. That's stupidity.

Cheers,
Buffy

[Racoon]

Buffy makes many good points on many different levels:
My Grandfather, who is near death, served proudly in the Navy during WWII.
He has the tattoos and drunken Irish sailor attitude to prove it!
All I can say is " May God Bless Our Men and Women in uniform !!!"
They provide us a GREAT service.
And speaking of the Naval branch of service, God Bless our Trident Nuclear Submarines; For which REALLY keep us safe, and our enemies SCARED