One of the things I’ve thought a lot about since my time in the Army is the right and wrong aspect of our current wars. More specifically the war in Iraq since that’s the one I participated in. After coming home and being discharged you have a lot of time to think about things like that. I still haven’t definitively made up my mind one way or the other, but that doesn’t do anything to change the fact that what’s done is done and can’t be changed. In conversation I’m typically not a very open or overly talkative person, but if it comes out that I am a veteran, and a Purple Heart recipient I usually get two questions; 1- did you kill the guys that injured you? Don’t know and don’t really care, and 2- what do you think of everything going on over there? The obvious answer to me is what the hell is the difference what I think about any of it?

When I went to Iraq I was 22 years old. Most of my closest friends were younger than me, and the rest were pretty close to my age. As a 22 year old guy I had a lot of things going through my head, but I can honestly say that none of it had to do with critiquing the United States’ foreign policies despite the fact that it greatly affected me. I think it’s irrational to expect the teenage soldiers who fight a war to be held accountable for that decision and examining the long term impacts of it. When I joined the Army I wasn’t doing so because of any strong feelings I had about the wars. And when I went to Iraq I wasn’t excited because I got to invade another country. I just thought it was part of the job I had chosen. I didn’t think of it as my war, or our war, it was just what we had to do as soldiers, nothing more and nothing less. I didn’t think about, nor did I care in the least about the long term or political ramifications of doing so. As guys in our teens and early twenties, we had other things on our minds.

This makes it especially strange when coming home from Iraq. We encountered both parades to thank us, as well as rock throwing protesters condemning us to an eternity in hell. I wasn’t really sure what to think about any of that either since the greater choice of going to Iraq in the first place wasn’t at all mine, but I guess that’s the easy way of expressing your unhappiness with the political leaders and nation that made the decisions they did. And I have always been of the opinion that if someone had negative things to say about me as a result of my decision to join the military and willingness to go to Iraq and all of the things that that entails, there’s a very good chance that I’ve been called worse things by better people so I guess I’m ok with that. Likewise when people are over generous with thank you’s and praises, again, it wasn’t my decision to invade Iraq, I was just along for the ride, and as hard as it is to believe this, President Bush failed to contact me and ask for my opinion on the matter before going ahead with it. So I will take your thank you’s with a polite smile, but I don’t feel as though I’m deserving of any.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even having spent 15 months in Iraq I don’t have any brilliant answers for the mess that it now is. I would venture to say that there isn’t one person or one political party that is wholly responsible since it has gone from a big mess to a bigger mess in the last few years, and both parties have played an equal role in it. Even though the war has turned into a political blame game, which is absolutely disgusting because it says to me that dead soldiers are being used as a punchline in an argument, we’re all in this mess together. And the people who will pay the biggest price will be civilians. When we get attacked it’ll most likely be against civilians, and the innocent people living in the war torn areas are being slaughtered at an alarming rate.