sirenianshores

One soldier’s view:

This is my point of view from where I see things. It’s about the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all war. This isn’t meant to be political or parade a conservative or liberal point of view. Just simply my own view as the person I am, and why I have my views. Call it the view from how just one soldier sees it from his situation. It may take a lot for some people here to read this all, its very long and I didn’t feel I could take anything out to shorten it.

I’m currently in the US Army, and before I joined in 2005, talking with people it would always be one thing to talk about whether they agreed or not with being in there…having the classic debates over the issue. I had my opinions, but after I joined things obviously take on a different view. Now I don’t know if there is anyone else on these boards that also is currently serving for any of the branches, but this is how I feel.

Once I joined, I started realizing things and I’m sure anyone else who has joined while this war has been going on has realized too in their own way. It now became my job if I were to be called upon to do my part for the war effort. Partly because of the style of warfare going on over there, as we are not fighting against a conventional army and conventional means, everyone gets trained to do the jobs of combat patrols, clearing buildings, detaining people, security…there has been a common saying that everyone is trained infantry. No matter what you sign up to do you still have the chance of being in that “front line” situation where it’s their life or yours and your buddy’s. Everyone should know, but there are a few who don’t, that you shouldn’t expect to never get called on to get deployed. It is instilled in everyone that joins from the day they put on a uniform and start at basic training at the very beginning of this path, that when you ask “What is the purpose of the Army?” The answer is right there in our minds…to fight and win wars.

Fighting wars is something I thought a lot about when I was in the process of deciding to join. I mean, I’m a young guy and I have to weigh the option of having all these other regular civilian jobs, or entering into something where some day I might have to go to war. It’s probably different for some people when they are deciding whether or not to join, but I have to say that when it came down to thinking just about risks…getting injured to any degree of severity, getting killed, getting captured…I have to say that I really did not think much about it. For me, it was a decision on what I believed in, and what I thought was right. In my beliefs, it was about the sheer fact that I am an American, and about my patriotic values, and stepping up to serve the nation. For me that’s what it was, and I have long since accepted the fact that I may go to war, I may be forced to kill others. And then I look inside myself…

…my father was in the Air Force during Vietnam. I’ve known my entire life he has always held that period of his life very close to him, and as I got older I understood more and more. As far back as I can remember when the subject of his service would come up, he would talk about the people he served with. Every time he would talk about when you serve in the military, and you serve with others, you never forget those people to put it simply. He talked about how close you get, how you learn everything about them, how there’s always going to be that factor in that relationship that makes it stand out more and is more special than that of a friendship with someone who didn’t serve at all. He talked about never forgetting these people’s faces or names. I never was able to understand that…the bond and the friendship there. But now that I look back, and I look at how I now myself serve, and have served with others. I’ve trained with these people, lived with them, slept outdoors in a whole in the ground with them, gone through pure hell and punishment with them, had to suffer how miserable daily conditions can get with them…and I learned everything about them and they earned a special place in my life. It became a priority to defend any one of them with my life if we were in that kind of situation and if I had to. I can say to myself now that I know how my father feels all these decades after he left the service, and has not forgot anything about his war time buddies. And I know now how it’s not possible to explain what he would always try to convey…it really is beyond words. Going to war means more than killing the enemy, completing the objectives, and coming home. You go there and to you personally it also becomes a mission to make sure your buddy makes it back home even if it means you don’t. You don’t think about getting hit as you run out into an exposed area during a fire fight to get to your buddy who himself has been hit and needs your help…all you think about is getting him back to safety. You take care of them…you make sure he’s got enough ammo, enough water. A different world when I compare it to living purely as a civilian. A world where those are some of the things that are most important, and the worst insult you can say to someone is that you wouldn’t go to war with them.

War takes on a very deep and personal meaning. I’m sitting here in West Virginia and I’ve watched guys…my buddies, and we do use that word a lot, step up and ask to be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever they can be used. And while I am stateside, I hope and pray for these guys to make it home again. I know inside that if I had the opportunity, if I had the chance, I would chose to be there with them. I want to be walking with them into combat, I want to be there with them to protect them, and make sure they are able to get home. But for me, I have recently chosen a career path that for the immediate future doesn’t allow me to be deployed.

And I know I hear arguments about how justified it is of us being in a place like Iraq right now. The arguments for going in are debated, all kinds of quotes, sources, documents, intel, all kinds of stuff gets cited and referred to and argued over to support one side or the other. I personally never get myself involved too much in those kind of arguments anymore. For me, arguing politically about this issue, and just arguing it in general, I know it just isn’t something I need to do. I don’t see being sent to fight a war in Iraq as a political issue, I see it as a duty. If I have to ever go, I can safely say I won’t object to it. I will go and I will do my job to the best of my ability, and in the face of the enemy I will not give up and surrender. I have been trained and I never forget my training or let it leave me as being something instilled deeply inside of me. My ex-girlfriend learned very fast to not try and come up behind me and put her hands on me. It’s instinct inside of me that says this might be someone going for me, I don’t know what their intentions are or who they even are, I have to defend myself. Some may call that paranoia…to me it’s a second nature I’m glad I have, because some day it may save me.

During my service, I haven’t yet been in a combat situation. Some people consider it pure luck to have never even been deployed. Though I serve with many who personally seen the face of combat and war. Some have fought in more than one of our nation’s wars, some have only fought in his recent war. But I talk to these people, and they can only do their best to describe it. I have yet to be put through training by someone who hasn’t seen combat. I hear their stories and they try all they can to paint an image for me with words. I’ve heard good stories, and I’ve heard bad stories. Even without going to war, you get exposed to what kind of enemy we are currently against. In my honest opinion, and in my heart, this is an enemy who commits such inhumane acts of violence, and cruelty, that I never thought a human being could be capable of bringing themselves to do. To go out of your way to take a human being and put such effort as I have learned of, to go beyond words…to destroy a life and the body of a person in such a savage way…it can only be equated to a slaughter. Obviously a soldier is going to be the target of the enemy. And the soldier’s target is the enemy in return. And that’s where we leave it. We place restrictions on who we consider the enemy and on what grounds, and what kind of force we can use. However, this is an enemy who himself does not limit his target to just us soldiers. Anyone can be a target. It’s so senseless to hear of who they inflict pain and suffering and death upon. I once had an NCO who was training us who told a story about how school children needed to have soldiers escorting them to and from school every day, because they were being shot at, explosives were being planted on the routes they would have to go…there’s no discrimination. Stories such as that are not uncommon to be told. Other stories could sound like how convoys would get ambushed. One method was to lure us out of the vehicles, and to do this they would put something in the middle of the road. Sometimes I heard about it being an animal, and sometimes I heard about it being a child. Early on the convoy would, because its how the situation would be treated, stop and whichever it may be would be moved off the street so that in our eyes, they are out of harms way. Then the ambush and now people die or get hurt. The solution for this? The convoys no longer stop in most cases for something that may be blocking the way…animal or child.

This past year I spent time at Ft. Sill Oklahoma during the summer. I did what I had to do and I learned a lot. But I will never forget the last night I spent in Oklahoma. A few of us got a couple hotel rooms in Oklahoma City to stay in till the next morning when we were to fly out. Sometime around 2 am myself and two others decided to go out to eat. At the same time we showed up at the restaurant, two other men arrived as well. They noticed we were military by the way one of the guys was wearing their dog tags outside their shirt. We ended up eating with them, and learning that one of the guys was a former Marine sniper. He told us about some of the things he saw while he was in Iraq. He did a lot of talking, but made two big points. For one, he told a story about four soldiers in a building one night. Three would sleep while one would stay awake and guard, in shifts. At some point the guard fell asleep. With no guard, unknown men came into the building and killed them in their sleep and took all the gear they had. The first lesson…don’t let your buddies down. The second thing he wanted us to know was him bluntly saying if he had to do it all over again, he would have killed more people. At first that seems a little extreme, but he explained how you could never trust any of the civilians too much. Restrictions say that we can’t use force unless there are obvious reasons to, such as force used on us, or a clear danger and threat. Consider that a “loophole”. He said he would have killed more people since he thought it was better to kill someone you think is going to cause harm before the most seemingly casual of people uses some kind of weapon and then it’s too late for everyone to defend themselves. I’ll never forget him.

Again, people debate and argue the war. People object, and sometimes those people who are objecting are members of the military. I have never, and I’ve never talked to anyone who has known, a soldier from any branch that has put up a stance of being against going to Iraq. At the same time however, of course we all have our differing political views, different moral values, and some have said they disagreed with the politics over it, or maybe the reasons that were used, but they will also say they have a duty to go if so ordered. Knowing such violence exists against defenseless people is a big reason for some to get in this war and eliminate and try to make a difference and give countless others the chance to live. It’s not even limited to violence, it’s also oppression and the denial of freedoms. Some call serving in the military a service to the American people. I’d say it also extends to service to anyone anywhere being denied the rights of even the most basic freedoms. I know that I’ve enjoyed being alive, and more so being an American. I consider it a privilege to be able to live as I chose. So I know what it’s like to live in such a way…but other’s don’t. That’s a cause worth fighting for all it’s own.

And as I talk about the question of why we fight which exists when you think about this war, I can only begin to express a very powerful feeling that I have felt at every post I have been to. We know why we fight. Those who have been there and came back have no shortage of memories they brought back with them of seeing what good acts are being done over there every day. Making sure children make it to school and back home safely, supplying these schools as well as even building them, forcing the enemy out of a village they inflict the fear of death and public executions on in the name of Sharia law so that they have a base to operate out of, giving toys and candy to children…playing with the children…allowing them to experience the real joys of being so young for the first time that we here were so used to while we were growing up, building their infrastructure that was left in ruins by the pre war government, not allowing hateful influence to infiltrate the country, and removing the reason from the people of Iraq to be afraid about their lives, the list just keeps going on and on from biggest of degrees of providing some kind of positive to Iraq as a whole, right down to individual soldiers taking it on themselves to do something to provide a citizen he sees that is in need. Such interaction exists among many. Soldiers take time to go play a game of soccer with children…Iraqi men are given birthday parties thrown by the unit they work for…friendships are made. To give to those people things that I cannot even begin to imagine not having myself. I couldn’t put myself in the place of someone who is forced to live a life where fear is a daily influence. And I know, those I am privileged to serve with know, that a service to fellow man is one of the most rewarding and meaningful actions that we not just as members of the military, but as sheer human beings, can ever do in life. For all we give up and sacrifice, you take on a certain perspective of life in general where I think Joseph Galloway said it right when he wrote about the guys of Ia Drang when he wrote a line that always sticks with me, “We were soldiers once…and young.”

When I was with a group of new enlistee’s, one of the higher up senior NCO’s addressed us and I will never forget him telling us this, that it takes a lot within a person to stand up when no one else will and say “I will” when there is a call to duty and service, and that we can only hope to be fortunate enough to be able to serve our fellow man. Those words have always meant a lot to me. For me, and I know others feel as I do, war will never be about politics. Politics will start and end a war, but it will never define it. I consider myself lucky, and honored to serve this great nation’s Army, and I agree whole heartedly with being in Iraq. I think to myself, why leave? There are still people there who are deeply in need, who can benefit from a guy like me going over there and fighting for a cause that they can’t fight for themselves.

I see an argument about the right and wrong of the Iraq war as something along the lines of, “It looks good on paper, but…” The “but”…but there is so much more, this war means so much more than any of these arguments can include on either side of the fence. From those soldiers who come back from the fighting, and see everyday life back in America for the first time in up to a year and a half, I have heard them say they are saddened…they are saddened because they as witnesses and as the people who went to this war, come back and they confirm what some suspect…that in their own home country the good that they helped make possible over there is ignored to a very great extent. They see overwhelmingly the view of the American press on the Iraq war as negative. I talk to them, and only imagine how it’s got to feel for them inside that all the good that they and others could make possible in that country, an effort that requires a certain brand of person, and in their own home land what is being done by these men…and I will say what is being done by these good men, who have gone over there and returned…some who have gone over there and died in the name of, and others who come back from additional tours over, is not praised. We as a nation can produce such men and women who sacrifice their lives, who go through so much and come back and can bring back within them personal horror stories…seeing their closest friends in life die, and suffer such scars that no one will ever see, but they endure it all because out of what they give up comes good for so many others…but we as a nation cannot put it in a light where instead of a majority of negativity, there is a majority of positives, and praise for these heroes.

My father recently met a man who also served in the Vietnam war. When these seemingly regular guys told each other that one special thing about their lives…that they served in that war, they said to each other what they didn’t get for the effort and sacrifice because of such an attitude in their country…a simple “welcome home” which means a lot to this day to these two men. Even if such negativity is to exist, and a “thank you” or a “welcome home” is not to be found, I still see on the faces of those who have come back, and through their words the happiness and pride, because the service they personally did is all worth it even if no one recognizes them for it. I myself can smile when I think about what I do because I know I have a chance to do something so important and selfless during my life time. I look at myself, and I look at my father who is also a hero who fought against the Communist North Vietnamese, and I can look at his father’s before him who were part of the “Greatest Generation” who fought against the Nazi’s and Japanese…and as I look at these members of my family I always hope that I too can be as good a man.

In the end, we are going to remain in Iraq. With so many views there are from people that put their beliefs in all the different arguments, reasons, ideologies, personal beliefs…I do believe with my heart that every last one of these people who aren’t in the shoes of a soldier, are lacking a certain perspective and depth on it that I see, and also seen by those I serve along side with. Even though as I said am not in a position to go, and I would gladly volunteer if I could, I’ll still hope for my time to come where I can do my part to help anywhere I can. If someday I should go to war and be killed, I feel as though my life would end as I would want it to…complete. As simple a thing as that, knowing that if I was given just seconds to say my final words, I could say that I strove to do all I could for what I believed in. I consider my beliefs to be my fighting spirit, and no argument or debate or anything I may hear anyone say, can ever diminish that, and I hope to always live under these few words that I have spoken so many times…I am an American soldier.