For approximately three or four weeks I've been trying to obtain a better understanding of the Iraq War as well as the Afghan War. But I have focused more attention on Iraq. In short I've watched, I think, five documentaries and I'm in the middle of an extremely long, but captivating book that gives a "cool-headed" exposé on pre-war through the post war invasion of Iraq up to 2003, and then the REAL war of insurgency that started thereafter. I started recently to better understand how we got where we are. In fact, I think any future soldier joining the US military in any particular capacity that does not already have a working knowledge of our present predicament and how we got here, would be savvy to make sure he or she is informed! Allow me to explain why.
During the first initial years of this war I spent little to no time truly caring nor investing any real effort towards understanding it beyond watching the news channels--at least for the first four years. I was in college when the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred, doing my music theory homework outside my professors office door at the University of Florida (which will be referred to as "UF" hereafter). The initial shock of this event remained with me for a few months and then life went on as if it didn't happen. All of us students kept going as if it didn't even happen, until the announcement came that we were invading Iraq. I was glued to the television and felt very afraid of what this could portend for the future of America at the time.
Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled on or around my birthday which was April 9, 2003 and didn't know this at the time because I didn't care. I was a stupid college student more worried about hanging with my friends, my fraternity obligations and waking up to get to class on time. Suffice it to say, the invasion came to my attention for a time, but like 9/11, was forgotten until the reports of the utter chaos started streaming in almost endlessly on every news channel. It was so depressing, but nothing that couldn't be drowned out by the personal drama of my life in college. So clicking the remote to watch MTV, Cartoon Network and movies was not a hard thing to do.
Come 2004 the political consciousness among my generation was awakened by an urgent need to get President Bush out of office. Moreover this cry resonated all over the UF campus that "Bush must go," in so many words--accompanied by MANY varying vulgarities used to refer to his intellelct, in their view, and concerning his infinite wisdom regarding both America's domestic and foreign policy--but mainly the latter. But personally that year I was sort of awakened to the dire circumstances in which we, the youth, America's future, found ourselves. We were told that this election would define the next four years and the livelihood of our country for decades thereafter, therefore we must wake up, stop drinking, partying and go vote this election year--and I did. I will not reveal who I voted for, but I had never been so passionate about anything political in my life. And besides, 2004 was the first year that I could vote.
Fast-foward to 2005 Bush won and the general morale was bleak for a lot of people, including me. It was as if a dark cloud that was already hovering above the campus and the nation for that matter got darker and we were entering some level of hell we could not yet fathom. According to icasualties.org, the largest number of casualties among US armed forced occurred from 2005 to 2007. I think this was the saddest and harshest years that America had experienced both here and abroad simultaneously in a long, long time since Vietnam. It is hard to believe that the general morale of our US troops was high with so much death around them. Finally, it was in those dark years that I had finished college, and was struggling to start my post-college life in the professional world as a teacher.
This is where I want to come full circle now and tie in my choice for a career in the military. From about 2005 onward I slowly started to feel a strong sense of something along the lines of, perhaps, guilt, obligation, and need to give back. I had no idea how I'd do it, but all the while I entertained the idea of joining the military on a number of occasions, but quickly dismissed it because of the ongoing conflict that we were and still are involved in. But teaching, growing professionally, and maturing into a better more proficient adult made me more level-headed. At the same time, however, my career interests and circumstances were changing from a number of decisions that I had made from 2007 to the present, which began to present a bigger picture to me. Now, I'm purposefully being vague by washing over a lot of boring details that made the Army appear to be a viable and reasonable option to me. But the important part I want to present here is that the window of opportunity and the sign, if you will, that told me "this is it, do it" came in the form of a rock in a hard place while trying to finish a degree that logistically and financially speaking was impossible. So when the opportunity presented it self, I resigned my thinking to "if the initial process of joining goes smoothly without denial from the army, then it's meant to be." Let be known to the reader that my resolve is based on my belief that nothing can be just pure coincidence.
So I guess I said all that to make the point: I felt that I could no longer stand by and not give my share of service while so many people have lived and died while I was frolicking about here in the states. The thought just didn't and still doesn't sit right with me. I want to serve and I'm glad I'm doing at a time in my life where I am most stable in my values and ways of thinking about the things that matter most in this world: life, family, service, friends, God and country--not necessarily in that order of course.
Any questions?
