Deep Inside My Thoughts

I delivered pizza tonight to a platoon of soldiers that just returned from Afghanistan. Evidently the barracks at Camp Atterberry don’t have air-conditioning. That got me thinking.

For forty years, the role of our armed forces was the containment of Communism. Thousand upon thousands of soldiers were stationed in Berlin, waiting for a Soviet attack that was never to come. Our submarines forces tracked every Soviet nuclear missile sub (SSBN). Attack subs waited for the orders to come across the comm, waiting to sink soviet subs before they could launch their missiles against the US. Near Soviet airspace flew B-52’s equipped with gravity deployed nuclear bombs, waiting for the order to break track and lob their deadly cargos against Soviet military facilities. I’m sure the Soviets did the same. The only way we survived was through Mutually Assured Destruction. Those times were a lot simpler, if not scarier.

We knew who our enemies were, and we knew who stood with us. NATO against the Soviet Bloc. I remember my parents freaking out over the Soviets, and that was right after the wall fell. I grew up too late to fear a Soviet attack, and I don’t really remember more than a handful of times that my family talked about it. Still though, perhaps perversely, times were safer back then.

What is our enemy now? The Bush Administration tells us that terrorism is now. How do you declare war on terrorism? You can’t field an army and defeat terrorism. Isn’t terrorism more of an idea than a tangible object? We’re attempting to fight a unconventional war, with conventional forces. Relations to Vietnam are very appropriate to the ‘War On Terror’ that takes place today. How do you declare war on a person? How do you wage war when that very terrorist might be a citizen you have sworn to protect. It’s quite a paradox.

The Tube attacks in London have only illustrated the ease of domestic terrorism. You see, the Bush Administration post 9/11 gave everyone this image of a terrorist…you know. All terrorist’s are Arab, believe in Allah, and view the US as a evil institution. That just isn’t the case. We cannot afford to stereotype ‘terrorists’. If you remember, before that fateful September day, the worst terrorist attack was the Oklahoma City Bombings. That was a Caucasian who blew up a federal building. That wasn’t a so-called “Islamic Radical”.

All these years later, my peers are bleeding on foreign soil in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really is a shame. How many dead now? And for what? What has changed in this world? And the question no one seems to ask anymore : Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction Mr. President? Where are the weapons? Where is our justification for invasion? So many unanswered questions, so many unneeded deaths. I can understand Afghanistan, but I can’t Iraq.

I fear these two wars may have cost the US our military security, since recruiting goals are way behind need. What will we do when we run out of soldiers to do our soldiering for us? Is a draft and a conscription really that far off? A country that has no military power, has no power period. We are respected because we have the the teeth to bare when needed. As things go now, we’ll be able to bomb the hell out of a third-world country sure. But occupation won’t be an option, because we’ll have no ground forces. It seems the world will change once again. Thank god I’m ‘older’ and ‘not suitable for duty’.

So what do we do? We can’t just pull out. We have to stay the course, and not let Iraq descend into violence. We decapitated a leader, and instead of withering away, the rest of the body just pulled out their own guns and established their own claims. Who do we saber-rattle next? Iran? North Korea? What about China? If we didn’t do so much trading with China, we would be standing in a meeting at the UN, denouncing the entire nation. But, China is a major business partner and we can’t afford to aggravate it.

The world is so complicated these days.