let my actions speak for me!

i'm relatively new to blogging, but i like the concept. i write stuff, you read it, you write stuff, i read it and hopefully it sparks some conversation and further gets the creative juices flowing. at least that's part of it to me.

two people have posts out there that caught my eye recently. JL4 has one about military deserters at: http://jl4.blogspot.com/2006/03/artful-dodgers.html and Cora has one about leadership at: http://maydensvoyage.blogspot.com/2006/03/leadership-is-absent-of-consensus.html . they're not really on the same topic, and the thing that i'm writing about isn't either, but it's all just random stuff that sparked off in my noggin.

soldiers are not policy makers. we're instruments of policy. policy that was set by (in our case) elected officials that hold positions in our country's government. these officials were elected by a majority (yeah, yeah, we all know about electoral college votes, this is an oversimplification. so shoosh) of the voting members of the population of our country. i.e. YOUR (yes, i'm making the gross assumption that anyone reading this is a citizen of the U.S.A. not because i'm egotistical and think everyone is such a citizen or any of that nonsense, but because not too many people read this and the ones that do as far as i know are u.s. citizens) elected officials. now most of the people that read this wouldn't argue about the use of "your", but i know plenty of people in the U.S. who would. the "don't blame me, i didn't vote for him" crowd annoys the hell out of me. if you're a citizen, he's YOURS, whether you voted for him or not. that's the way the system works. sometimes the guys you vote for win, sometimes they lose. deal. anyways, soldiers just go where we're told to go and do what we're told to do.

having said that, it doesn't mean that we're not intelligent or responsible people. we knowingly joined the military service. remember all that hoopla about how bush might be re-instating the draft and how that bothered everyone? we're an all volunteer military. sure you'll hear stories about how this guy didn't know what he was getting into, or how that guy just joined for the college money, or how that guy's recruiter lied to him. but for the most part, we all joined with eyes wide open. we're responsible for our actions.

i can't speak for every soldier wearing a uniform. but i personally have a love/hate relationship with the army. i say that i love the concept and hate the reality. that's not entirely true. but it's a HUGE organization with lots of good and bad. but it's my niche. i bleed green. of my 15 adult years i've been a soldier for 11, and have been deployed for almost 2 years of that time. there was NO place else i would've rather have been on the first anniversary of 9/11 than in afghanistan. i'm proud of what i do. do i love the violence? no. do i want to kill people? no. but i love my country, and i want to protect it. i have a great life and i'm amazingly grateful for the opportunities that i have, especially after traveling to afghanistan and iraq and korea and other places. i love being mentally and physically and emotionally challenged, i love molding young soldiers because that's the impact i have on the army, my way of saying "thanks" for the impact it has had on me. i love the other men and women that i've met as a soldier who think the way i think and the ones who don't. if i was smart enough, i'd be a doctor, if i had figured it out earlier maybe i'd be a policeman or fireman, but the life led me to being a soldier and that's my contribution.

i don't get into my personal feelings on the war or politics much, but let me discuss for a few minutes why i am okay with us being in iraq. i think saddam was bad and i think if we do things right (whether we're doing them right is another question) this country and the population will be better for our involvement. i know for a fact that at some point after desert storm he did bad things and had weapons that were in violation of his agreements. we may not be able to find them now, but he had them at some point. although i don't enjoy being at war, i've trained the majority of my adult life for this. most people go to work and do their job every day that they're at work. we go to work and train for our job and hope to never have to do it for real. but we are now, and it's very gratifying to see that we can do it. again, i'm not talking about killing people or violence, i'm talking about the leadership, the taking care of your joes, keeping them safe, fed etc... my big reason for being here though? i'm a soldier. i'm trained to fight. in theory, i have the skills to parachute behind enemy lines and lead a squad or platoon on a variety of types of missions from bridge recon to movement to contact. i am very proficient with a wide variety of firearms, explosives, vehicles, communications devices and small unit tactics. my family and friends at home? they don't have those skills, or if they do, they don't practice them regularly. i would much rather engage the enemy over here, than have the enemy engage unarmed, unskilled americans at home in the states. which is exactly what happened on 9/11. and while there have been some incidents in spain and england, for the majority, we've kept the violence in the middle east. bush's opponents point out that the conflict might take years over here, because we don't have an exit strategy. they've mentioned that the borders are wide open and terrorists are coming into iraq. in my mind, neither of those is a bad thing. if we end this war today, it gives the terrorists an opportunity to regroup and start picking out fat juicy targets in the states. same reasoning behind not denying them access to the country.

where am i going with all of this? i'm saying "don't speak for me". i am getting so pissed off just thinking about people who use soldiers as an argument. if i die over here, no one who really knows me will have the nerve to protest in my name. it's a free country, they're more than welcome to protest on their own, but they won't dare use my name or question my sacrifice. my parents lost one child in the last year, and they would LOVE to have me home safe and sound but they respect the fact that i'm an adult, respect my ability to make decisions for myself, and realize that after eleven years, this is the longest i've stuck with anything. that probably means that i love it and so they support, rather than question my decisions. if my nice, rational arguments here aren't enough to convince someone, let me point to the fact that re-enlistments are at all time record highs right now. soldiers who are currently serving in combat zones are knowingly re-enlisting to stay in the army, realizing that they'll probably be sent back over here. sure we get some money, but in the grand scheme of things it's really not that much. most of these guys could exit the military and make that much money in the increase in pay they'd make the first year or two at a civilian job. a nice, cush, safe civilian job.

i volunteered for this particular deployment. i could've stayed home and let this unit come over, but i couldn't. confusing? legally i had no obiligation to come over here. but once asked, i would've had a rough year knowing that there were guys down range who said they needed me to join them and i said "no". so i volunteered for serving with the army three different times now, i volunteered for different types of additional training that was needed by this particular unit, and i volunteered to deploy to iraq with them. let these actions speak for themselves and don't speak for me.