This one seems like it would be common sense but I live in America and you would be amazed at how many blow-hard 'Murica! idiots there are here.
Please read on so I can explain my stance.
When I joined the Military at 17-years-old, still in high school it wasn't because I wanted to go fight brown people in far away lands. It wasn't for some ridiculous amount of patriotism, either. No history of service in my family.
I was a poor kid, from a poor family and that recruiter made some amazing promises. College, paid in full. A free computer to help with my studies, health, life AND dental insurance. Early retirement and of course, a cool $80,000 bonus to go with my chosen career of helicopter repair.
Sounded really freaking great on paper. I scored amazing on my ASVAB and landed the spot I wanted.
They (Shawn, my recruiter and another recruiter working with him) took me to MEPS. My mother was dead set against me joining, but her husband was for it. The recruiters lied on my health history. Broken bones of the past erased, my childhood asthma never happened.
I was okay with it, sure of myself, after all, according to the media and my 17-year-old knowledge of the world, we weren't at war with anybody.
I was at the Saint Paul MEPS the morning of September 11th, 2001.
The briefing room doors were left open, televisions going as we listened between stations. Vision checked. A plane hit the first tower. Walk like a duck. A plane hit the second tower. Pee in this cup. A camera follows a man jumping to the ground. Hearing test. A plane is down in Pennsylvania.
Some recruiters left with their charges. The first tower fell. The place is really fucking quiet.
Everyone watches in horror. The second tower fell.
Put your hand on the bible. Repeat after me. Sign the paper. Helicopters are in the sky to protect the Twin Cities.
The Pentagon was hit too. Mom on the phone crying, asking if I signed.
Horror. Seventeen years old, dozens of terrorist groups race to claim the attack. Classmates are frothing at the mouth to join so they can go "kill the mother fuckers."
People are calling for blood. The body count rises. I'm still in high school, learning how to dismantle weapons and march and and take commands.
My paper work is "lost" and some man gets my job. I am switched to Medical Supply without so much as a "by-your-leave".
Then it happens. Major Miller calls us to assemble. He tells us Bush os sending us to war. I will never forget his words.
"You do not have to respect the man, or his decision. Only his power, and his position." Our commander, and many others, did not agree with going into Iraq to pursue a guy said to be in Afghanistan anymore than any of us did.
But we were legally bound. Children and all. I couldn't vote yet. Couldn't have my first drink. But I could go kill strangers on the other side of the war.
We started amping up the PT, carrying rubber ducks and learning to shoot our M16-A2's.
17 years old. Throwing hand grenades and firing a fully automatic weapon.
Then, it was time to go. National Guard leading the way. Echo Company of the 434th MSB left without me. A shattered ankle, playing flag football. I still have problems with it to this day.
They didn't come back for a long time. Just over two and a half years. The Red Bulls are the reason they put time limits on tours. No limits on how many times they can send you, of course, but limits on how long you can stay each time.
Some of them didn't come back. We were a fucking medical company for gods sake. Those who came back, came back different. A lot of them had developed unhealthy coping mechanisms, even those not including drugs and alchohol. They would laugh at weird times and try to keep the humor going, or they'd have very little to say at all. Some had such far-away eyes it was unsettling. They wouldn't, couldn't talk about what they'd seen. What they'd done.
Credible estimates put the deaths of Iraqi people at up to 460,000 people. They call them "casualties". Sorry but they are NOT sorry. We are talking about men, women and children.
It eats at me every single time I think of these people, living their lives and being murdered for the crime of living in a country America had decided to attack.
Worse is the disgustingly flippant attitude about it from some Americans. "They should kill them all, solves that problem!"
What kind of values are those? What kind of sick person wants an entire country of people dead, without any credible evidence that anyone in the country had anything to do with those towers falling?
Bin Ladin was blamed, so let's go after Hussein! Makes sense in Murica!
Three of them fell, by the way. Two planes. Three towers, a lot of Americans tend to forget that for some reason.
A man avoided paying for his BBC television licence by PROVING that the BBC spoke about building 7 falling 20 minutes BEFORE IT FELL.
But we don't talk about that in America. Too confusing.
Many also tend to ignore reality. They say idiotic things about going to war and "kicking ass" knowing full well their asses will have nothing to do with the war other than watching it on the TV.
These are the same people that scream at players in a football game around their beer belly as though they could do any better, treating the lives of our youths as pawns. Barely even watching as they come home and kill themselves after their service in record numbers because the reality is... Those people cozy on their couches, advocating for war do not care how many die.
My proposal for dealing with this type of person is a simple one. For every time a person advocates for war, they serve a year in that war.
So that Facebook post proclaiming "Bring it on Iran! We'd kick your ass!" Will get you a year. I mean, you used the term "we" thus including yourself, right?
Make it mandatory. I don't care if you're 80. Then when it concerns your own life, you might be bothered to think about others.
The Vietnam War
After I left the military I went on to become a CNA/HHA and I worked directly under the VA.
I learned things from my clients that my history books never told me. You become friends with these people over time. They begin to trust you.
I'm going to warn you now, the story I am about to re-tell is heart-wrenching. It is one of many and I had nightmares about it after hearing it told by a grisled old vet, shaking with grief and tears. I'm going to tell it from his voice.
"I hadn't been over there long. You get there and they decide where to send yah.
So we're in a big convoy, movin' along to the next place, I'm riding front point in a duece and a half. Cause there are just lines and lines of 'em (vietnamese people) following the sides of the convoy and sometimes they like to go an' throw stuff in the trucks. Stretching on for miles, people following these roads, right up close.
We get to a spot in the road and we've gotta stop for something, probably Water Buffalo in the road, I never did find out. And people just keep filing on past. And then I see this grandmother and her kid.
They really stood out. He must've been half black or somethin'. Cute little shit, curly red hair. Three- maybe four years old. They just stood there a few feet ahead of us, she was holding his hand just starin' ahead.
Well after a while we get to moving and that woman. he could barely speak, lost in the memory That evil viperous bitch of a woman, she just pushed that little boy right under our wheel.
I went to hollarin' but it was too late. You know how those rigs are, a kid that size under those wheels... Well. he needs several minutes to compose himself, but he wants to keep telling the story. He needs someone to hear it.
Well my driver hits the brakes and hollars back to find out what I'm on about. I'm about to shoot this woman in the fucking face but he just hits the gas and says to leave her. They do it all the time, for the money.
She might even have kidnapped that poor little kid. Reparations. The US Army paid them for lives lost. Cattle too. Sometimes the farmers would run whole herds of them into a camp to get the soldiers to shoot them.
Then they get the meat, AND the Army pays them for their loss.
People do horrible, horrible things in war."
Do you know what the worst part of this is?
The US entered the war on the pretext of the USS Maddox being attacked in the Golf of Tonkin.
The only problem is, the USS Maddox was never attacked in the "Golf of Tonkin Incident" as the government now admits.
The US government used it as a way to gain public support to go in and attack the Vietnamese people.
Why? Well, I got different answers to that. But an awful lot of those answers are "Oh, we always figured it had something to do with those rubber plants we was guardin'."
Rich people use poor people to go to war so they can get richer. And those pawns are left to rot afterward.
One of my clients was allowed to rot away, I begged for more help for him. He should be in a hospital, not expected to live with only my assistance 6 hours a week.
He was diagnosed with ALS 1 week before it killed him. The VA is fucking useless. Poor people being pawns gain nothing. This particular poor person was one of the brains behind EMP bombs. Hawking can live over 50 years with ALS because he had money. This guy, he had less than 2 years.
Another client? The VA lost all record of his ever existing in a big ass fire. They claimed this fire was the reason he had zero proof of ever even being in the military.
He managed to find some letters he had sent from vietnam, and later the hospital where he stayed with a broken back.
They fought with him for over 20 years. This veteran of their war, pretending he deserved NOTHING while he lived with crippling PTSD and debilatating back pain. They denied him a surgery that could have helped him. Allowed him to walk.
By the time they magically found his papers that had been destroyed by a fire, it was too late for him to have the surgery. He would live his entire life in pain.
An estimated 40,000 veterans from a variety of American wars are curently homeless.
Trump just slammed Syria (again) and the cost of the missiles alone was $119,000,000. Yes. Millions.
Can you imagine how much better it would have been to use that money to oh, I dunno, fix FLINT?! Or maybe help the issues with some of our schools or failing infrastructure?
Nah. Gotta go golf now.
So, I'm sure most people stopped reading after the first paragraph. If you've read all the way here, thank you. Please feel free to leave an opinion in the comments.
Keep it civil please, I'm not in the mood for a Facebook style drama fest of "Don't like it leave!" Bullshit.
Shove your blindly patriotic ignorance somewhere special.
And that, is my unpopular opinion.
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