Agrarian, initially I supported the invasion, and I still do in that I want to see a better Iraq prevail, and our boys to come home safe and sound.
I'm the daughter of WW II kids. My Mom was 11, my Father 17, when the US was straifing the Italian suolo with firepower. The Germans came into my parents village, forced them to leave their homes so they could garrison their soldiers, and as a consequence my parents lived pretty much in abandoned buildings and lean tos for about a year.
After the war with Iraq began and when the WMD weren't found I began to reflect on how easy it was to convince me of war, and that bothered me. Next time up, I hope to be a little more circumspect.
I do think President Bush has accomplished the herculean task of beginning to sow a little democracy in an area where nobody believed it could flourish. And, while admittedly it's a little too soon to be hollering mission accomplished, mission accomplished, I fervently hope that President Bush's strategy pays off. And finally, I want to say thanks for your service to our Country.
My Mom and Dad even to this day can recount their experience of war in such detail as to make me feel I'm seeing it along with them. But the victims of war are far too easily forgotten or assigned the task of shutting up and taking it.
I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, I opposed the Balkans war, and I opposed Somalia.
It was the first Iraq war that woke me up, to tell the truth. Being in the military at the time, one saw how many lies and half-truths were being told to the public to whip up public support. Anyone who is familiar with the situation of Orthodox Christians in the Balkans knew how many lies were told by the Clinton administration to justify that one. I still shudder at the thought that we bombed Christians into the stone age in support of Muslims in the Balkans.
I say that I opposed the Iraq war, but I have been quiet in my opposition -- more of a refusal to support or defend it. Our rulers have been given the responsibility to decide these things, and the responsibility is on their shoulders. They have far more information at their disposal, and have agendas we never know about. What is put out for public consumption is designed to do what happened to you -- convince you that the war was necessary, and convince you that you were knowledgable enough to debate with friends and neighbors over it. Politics.
I pray that W., who I do basically like and support (the thought of having Gore or Kerry as President still makes a chill run down my spine), made a good decision for the US in getting us into Iraq this time. Time will tell.
There are lots of horrible things that go on in the world. We don't have the ability to fix them all at gunpoint -- even if gunpoint and bombs could fix them all. I believe that the Constitution means what it says: "Provide for the common defense." One can always defend that before both God and man. Pursuing more ethereal goals of peace and democracy at the point of a bayonet is much trickier to defend, at least for me.
I appreciate the thanks. I never had a bullet fly past my head, but I did serve, and was prepared for it if necessary. What I gained from my military service was incalculable, and has served me well in multiple spheres of my life ever since. Multiple things have changed in the military, especially during the Clinton years, that make it less of a place for a young man to grow. But maybe all old soldiers say that!