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Soldiers debate the warI have a couple simple and straightforward questions for you. After reading a bit of your material, I am confused: 1.) What is it you hope to accomplish? Besides confusing and demoralizing soldiers with inaccurate data and skewed facts, what is your agenda? From your writing style, I assume you are, or more likely, were in the military. Judging from your tone, you have some college education and are a tad elitist in view. From the text of your publication, I also assume you are no longer serving in that capacity.
2.) What qualifies you to have an opinion? How many combat zones have you served in, how many deployments have you made, how often have you been shot at or put even remotely in harm’s way, and how many of your friends have you seen put in the ground? What have you done for your country, military, or self to render you such a subject matter expert? Please feel free to elucidate at your leisure, I’m only a dumb fucking GI with lots of time on my hands to ramble at morons like you. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, – Specialist First Class C.S., 363rd Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Operations NCO 1150 North 4th Street Coolidge, Arizona 85228 Dear Cliff, It has come to my attention that you were addressing me in one of your letters to Traveling Soldier. So I will try to answer all your questions for your benefit and the benefit of anyone else interested. My ultimate goal is world peace. Of course that being such a lofty accomplishment, and that I couldn’t possibly achieve it on my own, I aim to start by expressing what I experienced in Iraq I try to relate to my readers some of the tragedies of the war zone and military life. Thus broadening an outlook on war in general. A great start would be to end America’s occupation in Iraq and bring my fellow soldiers and me home. Also reducing militarism and the dangerous fear-mobilized nationalism would help. Confusing and demoralizing soldiers has nothing to do with my agenda. However if soldiers do lose moral, or begin to question the war, that is just a side effect of them opening their eyes to the ways in which they have been manipulated and betrayed by their own government.  I don’t sit around all day and collect facts on the war. I just call it like I see it. I perform missions once and sometimes twice a day. In my free time I try to squeeze what little recreation and comfort from the misery of the deployed lifestyle. When I write, I write from experience not from data. It might be raw, emotional and extreme but, that is life in Iraq. I am in the military. Army to be exact and I have zero college. In fact I am a high school drop out wit a GED. But I read a lot in an attempt to educate myself. I seek alternative media sources so not to rely on FOX or CCN to inform me on world events. I stay open minded and am not to stubborn to change my views if I see a better solution. You are far off when you describe me as an elitist. I don’t regard any group or individual as better than anyone else. Not as far as potential goes. I treat everyone with mutual respect even those who criticize me. I welcome open communication in all forms. My qualification to have an opinion is the fact that I am human. I have served one year in Iraq now and I was a peace keeper in Kosovo. I was one of the few soldiers in the Balkans at the time that did see combat. But those are not qualifications to form ideas of your own. Any sane man that has seen war or not can have the right to desire peace. I never claimed to be an expert in anything but my own personal history. Your doubts about me being shot at, being in danger and how many friends have I buried are mean spirited. It still upsets me to even write about. I only ask when you speak to veterans in the future you tuck away your macho ideals and show a bit more compassion. Almost everyone I know that has gone down range has been shot at. Almost all of us have had friends hurt or killed. It doesn’t make me more of a man because I have had the misfortune of experiencing the paranoid chaos of an RPG ambush, the helplessness of a sniper attack or the panic of an improvised explosive device destroy a humvee full of my buddies in front of my very eyes. My service in the military helped my country very little. It made my family more enemies, polarized them in fear and brought more world suffering. What I have done with my writing is worked toward peace. And in the future I will have an even greater opportunity to use the memories of war to help teach people around the Earth that violent imperialism is not a solution for economic stability for the masses. I am happy you have time to be insulting toward yourself and me. You are smart enough to put together this little letter and I am sure you will be back around for another swing once you read my reply. I am glad that you are at least willing to talk about it. Maybe if we continue discussion we will find a common ground and work together to find the people responsible for the deaths of our friends and countless Iraqis. You are welcome, – Heretic Heretic, You are partially right; I am coming around for another swing, so to speak. I apologize for having misjudged you and your opinions. I am normally a fairly good judge of character, and your response struck a far different tone than I perceived in your flyer that indeed forces me to change my view of you. I am man enough to admit when I am wrong, and in this case, I was. I hope you accept this as a sincere apology, and if I have insulted you, I hope this will alleviate some of that injury. I am very surprised to read of your background and experience. I’m not doubting you, however it is very unusual for someone of your views and experiences to still be serving in the military. May I inquire as to why? It seems that you are very unhappy with the state of affairs of both the United States foreign policy and the military. What inspires you to continue serving? I am also curious as to what particular events or policies created your opinions. I spent time overseas in Desert Storm (the first round, so to speak), Bosnia (after the shooting stopped), and in Iraq in 03-04. However, I have not ever seen anything to make me think of the United States as imperialistic, or agenda-bound. Admittedly, I did have reservations about the war in Iraq, as I’m sure anyone who has ever seen war does. I would ask your opinion on this: If (because I’ve not seen evidence to bring me to this conclusion) there was an agenda behind our war with Iraq, do you not think the populace in general is better off for the removal of Saddam Hussein? The infrastructure is better than it was, the people have far more freedom than they have had in decades, they now have a voice in a fledgling democratic government, and while there is still violence, on the whole their quality of life is better. I am interested in your views, if you have the time to reply, I would appreciate it. Again, I hope you are willing to forgive my anger and abrasive statements in my previous email. I did lose a friend over there, and while I accept his death as an inevitable result of war, I am quick to anger when I hear commentary implying it was for nothing. Be safe, – Specialist First Class C.S., 363rd Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Operations NCO 1150 North 4th Street Coolidge, Arizona 85228 Page 5--> |
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