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CPTMitch, you strain mightily to come off as a rational, intelligent and circumspect individual, but on evidence of your words I find you to be yet another little boy (no matter your actual age) who loves playing with guns. You write: "I think he should join the military, or encourage others who think as he does to join as well. So that when the harsh decisions need to be made on the ground, there are people who will maintain the dignity of our nation." I see you have not as yet grasped the absolute INdignity of war. You seem to think those ‘harsh decisions’ were inevitable, rather than the entirely synthetic results of very BAD decisions made by the old men who so blithely risk (and waste) the lives of people as far from their social and family circles as possible.
You write: “I was sent back to the USA for medical reasons. They were going to send me all the way home. Although there was a risk, I went back to Iraq. This time it was my choice.” You write this in the crypto-macho terseness of tone appropriate to the modern action hero, of course. We all know that movie. That just-doing-my-duty modesty that we’re supposed to admire...respect...feel gratitude towards, yes? But guess what? I see right through your adolescent foolishness.
Why on earth would any well-formed, productive and intelligent human being whose town or city was not being invaded by a horde of armed marauders want to sign up as cannon-fodder in this or any ridiculous, impetuous blood bath? You seem to believe that you're behaving honorably and serving your country when in fact you are a dupe, sir, and not nearly as intelligent as you seem to take yourself to be. If you ARE intelligent, it’s in the manner of a fully programmable robot. Are you programmed to think that you and all those poor kids we call ‘soldiers’ (many of whom are soon to be mangled corpses) are defending someone, or something, or some…principle? Or are you simply not very good at critical thinking? Astonishing that it hasn’t hit you yet that what you’re doing is/was nothing more noble than serving to further an agenda the spoils from which, if there are to be spoils, will be shared neither by you nor any of your kin nor the kin of all the needless dead this conflict is responsible for. Enough dead to populate a good-sized town in the Midwest and for what? The ‘liberation’ of Iraq? Believe me, those tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians would say ‘no thanks’ if they could.
CPTMitch, the world would be a better place if young men like you would cease to be so goddamn gullible...or so enamored with playing soldier. Women and children the world over would be much better off if you confined your activities to the playing of violent video games and allowed truly responsible, honorable and heroic people to go about the relatively constructive business of LIVING. Sir.
