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• Monday, March 12, 2007 11:59 AM

  Let's Stay Focused.

  I'm a 29 year old woman who just graduated from a big university. During my time at the university (and at the anti-war rallies and such I attended), I had a slightly different perspective than my young peers. My dad was a WWII combat veteran (my dad was 55 when I was born). When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, my father joined the marines. He wasn't drafted. My dad joined the marines because Japan ATTACKED us. My dad fought JAPAN in the south pacific. So when 9/11 happened, I understood why people joined the military, and I supported the idea that perhaps we would need to go to war with whatever people were responsible for the attack (a point on which me and my completely anti-war friends differed). As someone said earlier, not everyone who is serving over seas is a blood-thirsty moron. In this country, not so very long ago, people who joined the military out of a sense of duty directly following a major attack could expect to fight the people responsible for the attack.

  BUT we can't say "imagine if after Pearl Harbor we went to war with China instead of Japan." 9/11 was not carried out by a specific country. And there's the rub, isn't it? It's hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that we're not fighting against a country as much as we're fighting against a shadowy network of religious extremists. I suppose the people who joined the military after 9/11 were working under an old fashioned sense of duty and patriotism, the kind where when one country declares war against you then by god you fight. It just isn't that clear-cut anymore, and it hasn't been since Vietnam. It's sad that so many young people got caught up in that recruitment sweep. It could have just as easily been me if my circumstances had been different. But let's be clear. There's something really wrong with your government when you have to have an advanced degree in history in order to make an informed decision about whether or not to join the military directly following an attack. Yeah, maybe a lot of people who have been around for the last 80 years knew, and maybe people who have studied history knew, but a whole heck of a lot of us didn't, and rather than say "well, ignorance isn't bliss, is it?" to the people who joined out of a sense of duty, I think we need to keep our anger and outrage focused on the people who started this war (our elected representatives, republican and democrat alike!).

  I think my father's decision to serve in the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor was an honorable one, and it makes me sick to see the current establishment take advantage of that very same desire my father had, that desire to defend the country after an attack, in order to recruit MY generation into this terrible war. When my father went to war to defend this country it wasn't so a pack of blood thirsty jackals could send future generations of Americans into friggin' Iraq like this. Seriously, I can't even talk about this anymore.

  —Bluefelix Read Bluefelix's other letters
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