June 23, 2005
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An essay about my opinion of my deployment everyone was required to submit for the battalion newsletter.
I joined the Army for very selfish reasons. Besides needing an income, putting my life in danger to see what it was like seemed like a learning experience. I might even discover what the Middle Eastern bogeyman truly is, this political piñata so different from the "Krauts" and "Japs" of World War II yet hated so similiarly. It is sadistically amusing to me how a war on a word can be fought with bullets, bombs, and, ultimately, itself. This war at its core is not about oil, freedom, or mutually assured destruction; it is an explosion of huge cultural tension. This war was unneccessary but inevitable, I think more appropriately called the War of Terror.
A year ago I could not bear to make eye contact with a passing man, dark skinned and wearing a turban. Everything I knew about the war came from the media. Siding with the left did not diminish the haunting of 9/11, very real and ever present. Meeting security-cleared Iraqis at the fuel point and watching them from the guard towers, I see human beings. We never exchange more than a few words, but everywhere they wave and smile to us; whether out of respect or a sense of self-preservation, life must go on for these people despite being in the middle of a warzone.
Comments (10)
"War" and "terror" are synonymous.
Enlightenment always comes at a price...but at least you are no longer of the opinion that the "enemy" is not human. ::trails off, deciding to shut up about things she knows only from books::
you fustrate me.
If you are interested in philosophy, please feel free to share any and all opinions you might have on my forum.
I don't think this war can be justified.
"War is old men talking and young men dying."
i thought a piñata had candy in it.
i meant, i thought a piñata is something with candy in it.
i must've sounded pretty stupid for a second there.
Lifetime Premium'd!
at least joining the army has taught you things that you would have never had learned if you stayed here in hawaii...... i really cant picture myself in your shoes.
being that your shoes are most likely bigger...
haha or smaller idk ihave big feet.
with all my aloha
jen
no, it's "yankee doodle" you moron. lol jp
Hey, this is a friend of Doc (Brian) Cochran's.......your essay was really good. No, scratch that, you should be a writer......I was really impressed by your command of the language and clarity of thought.