Why would this bother me?

I got an email forwarded to me recently, containing the text of a young Air Force Academy Cadet's essay on why one would choose to serve in the military. It was read in the Congressional Record in 2006 by Senator Allard (R-CO), and is pretty inspiring. It lets you know that there are young men and women in our military that--even if, like me, you don't support the war--you can be very proud of.

But then I thought about who had sent it to me. An unapolagetic neo-con who preaches the party line, I could taste the insults pointed at me, his "liberal" friend. The essayist speaks about "listening to our 'friends' who are home from State or Ivy League schools chock full of wisdom about how our war in Iraq is unjust and unworldly." I'm the only person on his forward list who went to an Ivy League school. And the way that "friends" was put in quotes; it just felt like an attack, like he was saying, "if these soldiers feel this just about their mission, how can't you?"

And so I though, why can't I? I thought about my conservative High School, where I would have been hard pressed to find people--in classes both above and below mine--who would have supported my stance. They were all fiercely pro-war. They would argue with me tooth and nail that we had to "take the fight to the terrorists" and keep our country safe from another attack, and so on.

Yet almost none of them signed up for military service - and most of the few who had did so in order to afford college. Almost none of them applied, like the essayist above, to the military academies, or enrolled in their respected colleges' ROTC programs; and those who did were the kids who had been talking about academies since they were Cub Scouts (and none of them will be serving in Iraq or Afghanistan).

So, here in my anonymous post, I ask how anyone can claim to be such a proponent of the war, to claim to support the troops, without, themselves, serving? It's no new revelation that this war was presented as one that should be "easy" and even, through oil, "profitable". It was going to be quick, and the American public hasn't had to sacrifice. Why not? If we are so at danger, why don't more supporters volunteer to fight? How can they resist taxes (especially the rich, who are least likely to fight) that are needed to pay fo the war effort?

We are in a war that has provided us no benefit, and untold losses. Our military has become stretched thin. We've had to pay millions for private security contractors. We've had to extend troop deployment times, and we've increased the length of enlistments. But the people circulating these kinds of letters, the people who call for supporting our troops, and the people who refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that it is time to leave Iraq, refuse to stand behind their beliefs. They want to spend more on the military, they want to commit to open-ended conflicts, but they don't want to enlist, they don't want their kids to enlist, and they don't want to pay the taxes to fund it. They only want the political implications that being part of the wartime party affords them. We aren't any safer because of Iraq.

But they will gladly use the bold words of a young cadet to forward their political agenda.