[Spam] RE: [Vision2020] Grunt's-Eye View

[Chasuk]

I hesitated joining this thread because I respect a lot of the people
contributing to it, and I knew that what I would say was likely to
offend.  However, I lack restraint, and it is easier to apologize than
to stay quiet.

First, I served in the United States Air Force.  To many who served in
the other branches, that is like confessing that I served in the Boy
Scouts.  This I know from personal experience. I've gotten in numerous
inflamed arguments with Marine and Army vets who expressed just such a
sentiment.

They were right, of course.  I joined the USAF precisely _because_ I
knew that we were civilians in uniform.  Before I joined, I went to
the library and looked up the mortality rates for the four branches,
ranking them in descending order, based on the prospect of becoming a
combat statistic: Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines.  Can you guess which
enlistment criterion I was following?

When I read Anthony Swofford's words, "I am a writer, one who lived
through one of the essential experiences of manhood: warfare," I
gagged.  Figuratively speaking, of course, as very little actually
makes me gag.  But this comes close.  Warfare is no more an essential
experience of manhood than the shaving of pubic-regions is an
essential experience of womanhood.  Scores of people do both of these
things, but that doesn't make them "essential."  That Swofford could
write those words and believe them reveals, to me, that he is a deeply
troubled individual.

I spent 10 years in the USAF.  Frankly, it was a job to which I was
ill-suited.  Jingoism has never worked with me.  I spent virtually
none of my young life trying to be cool or tough, my testosterone
quotient being apparently inferior.  I don't like sports, NASCAR is a
puzzling aberration, and I've never bragged about throwing up (this
may be generational, but bragging about puking was a common rite of
passage during my developing years).  The brownie buttons that the
USAF was intent on giving always made me wince, and not because they
poked me with the pins: I didn't want, or need, an attaboy for doing
something for which I was contractually obligated.  To me, the
defining characteristic of being an adult (a "man," if you are of my
gender) is doing the things that need to be done, BUT THAT YOU DON'T
WANT TO DO, and doing them without reward or complaint.  It isn't the
length/flaccidness/erectness of your penis, or even the
Schwarzeneggerian dimensions of your other muscles.  It's shutting up
and doing the job that needs to be done.  That's the only essential
ingredient of being a "man," in my opinion.

Conversely, being a man sometimes involves refusing to do the job that
someone else deems necessary, but that's a different, perhaps
thornier, subject.

Most people don't join the military for any noble purposes.  They join
because it gets them away from an unpleasant situation at home,
because it is a desperately needed job, because there is a family
tradition of joining, for the travel, for the educational benefits.  A
few join to serve their country.  To those reading this who joined to
serve their country, thank you.

I respect soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines who do the job
that they volunteered to do and who do it well, just as I respect
dedicated bakers and chiropractors and nurses and policemen and
teachers.  I respect truckers and fishermen and roofers and loggers. 
Over 900 truckers died on the job in 2004.  They died shipping frozen
beef patties to McDonald's and cartons of Twinkies to Safeway, all for
you and me.  But do millions put stickers on their cars, extolling us
to "support our truckers?"

I am not denigrating our troops.  In fact, I am firmly declaring that
it is possible to hate the war and be a member of the "'hate Bush' at
all cost" crusade without denigrating our troops at all.  I place
myself in that category, although I am not a particularly vociferous
Bush-hater.  I don't know that Kerry would have done any better, nor
Clinton before him, if either had been in an identical situation.  If
I am a hater of anything political, it is our flawed election system. 
I don't have any solutions, but it seems pretty broken to me, when the
ill-educated and ill-informed decide an election, controlled by
zealots with money.

Cheers,

Chas