War in Iraq

Many of the readers of the magazine know I am a Veteran, I served during two wars Dessert Storm and the Global War on Terrorism. At the end of my tour of duty in September of 2002 it was pretty evident that we were going to war in Iraq, I personally thought this was a mistake so when they asked me about staying on I told them "I am a soldier and if you give me orders that says that is what I am to do, I will do it but if you are asking me to volunteer then I am going home." I thought the reasons behind it were a lot more financial than altrusitic. Going after the Taliban and Al-Queda was right. They had attacked us on our home soil and we couldn't allow them to get away with that. Now here we are alomst 6 years later and we still haven't laid our hands on Osama Bin Laden who has most assuredly killed Americans yet Sadam Hussein who was no doubt a bad man but in the shceme of things never did anything to us is dead.

That said many of you may think I would support us pulling out of Iraq. That is not the case at all, we committed to this and now that we are there we need to continue with the job. To do anything else is to do a grave disservice to the Iraqi people and dishonors those who have died in the country. It sounds nice when people talk of bringing the troops home and God knows I wish they could come home. They truly deserve it and they regualrly get screwed over by the leadership of the war and their respective services who sit here in the U.S. while regularly extending private Snuffy's tour of duty over there. This though is not the time to leave Iraq but instead is the time to make sure the job is finished.

We are fighting a war and sometimes that is not pretty. People in Washington and in the Armed Services themselves are handcuffing our soldiers, seaman and airmen by placing stringent rules of engagement on them while our enemies don't care one whit about these things. And they see our concern for issues like this as weakness on our part. We all know this is not true but that doesn't change others perception. When dealing with people you need to deliver your message in a from they will understand and terrorists and extremists do not understand civility they understand brutality. I truly believe that is we offered a herd of 200 goats instead of $25,000,000 dollars for Osama we would have had him along time ago. I believe these people don't understand money they understand a herd of goats though.

One reason people in Washington handcuff are service members hands is so few of them have ever served themselves. It used to be a privilege to serve and most of our presidents had done so until Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush both took steps to avoid serving their country in the military and now are our commanders in chief without having any sense of what they are asking others to do. The same is true of our legislators many of them have never served so they think it is okay to whittle away at Veterans and Retiree Benefits. This is wrong. We need to chaneg things are else the day will come when we don't recognize this country anymore.