Would you do this?
Recently I have been corresponding with someone who had initially friended me through myspace...at first I thought he was just another weird, misguided solicitor, but I decided to message back asking his intentions, and started up a conversation. It turns out he is in the Marine corps, he is taking night classes at Harvard, and he will be deployed to Iraq in March. I have never had direct contact with someone involved in the military, and I asked him why he had chosen this path and what his views on the war were. His responses are incredibly insightful and his selflessness is indescribable, so I thought some of you might want to read them to gain another perspective on Iraq. As I admitted to him, I have a very vague and uninformed knowledge of this issue that I gather from the limited news I read or watch...I am sure that many of you are angered by the war as well but are still psychologically removed from the situation. I hope you find these excerpts interesting.
"My deployment is scheduled like this. On december first our unit will mobilize. We'll be doing administrative clean up and mobilization papers for the month of december. January we will go to 29 palms, california, to train. In february we'll partake in a training syndicate known as mojave viper training that will take 28 days to complete. At the end of training we'll be given time to see our families before we deploy. Afterward we'll be headed to somewhere in the Al Anbar province. If you're unfamiliar, that encompasses a chunk of the Euphrates river along with Al Ramadi and Fallujah. Where exactly we'll wind up isn't disclosed, but we know it's somewhere in this province.
At the earliest I'll be home next November.
If you've been following the news then perhaps you remember the 6 man sniper team that was killed mid august, followed by two car bombs that killed another 44 marines. Those men were all from a unit in Ohio. That's our sister unit, we'll be going to replace them. Recently the heat is turning up in Baghdad and on the Syrian border where snipers are doing the most damage.
I joined the marines because I wanted to be a part of something.... that same stupid save the world mentality that gets people killed. I've been opposed to the war on Iraq since day one, but I don't put that on my brothers in arms, I put it on our commander in chief. The way I see it is if I tow the line for six months, then I send someone home who would have had to tow that line in my place. I'm a fire team leader so I'll be responsible for the lives of four men.
If you ask most, they'll tell you they want to come home alive, or with all their limbs. My greatest fear is that I'll come home just fine, and that one of my men will not. I suppose that's something that the public can't understand."
"My deployment is scheduled like this. On december first our unit will mobilize. We'll be doing administrative clean up and mobilization papers for the month of december. January we will go to 29 palms, california, to train. In february we'll partake in a training syndicate known as mojave viper training that will take 28 days to complete. At the end of training we'll be given time to see our families before we deploy. Afterward we'll be headed to somewhere in the Al Anbar province. If you're unfamiliar, that encompasses a chunk of the Euphrates river along with Al Ramadi and Fallujah. Where exactly we'll wind up isn't disclosed, but we know it's somewhere in this province.
At the earliest I'll be home next November.
If you've been following the news then perhaps you remember the 6 man sniper team that was killed mid august, followed by two car bombs that killed another 44 marines. Those men were all from a unit in Ohio. That's our sister unit, we'll be going to replace them. Recently the heat is turning up in Baghdad and on the Syrian border where snipers are doing the most damage.
I joined the marines because I wanted to be a part of something.... that same stupid save the world mentality that gets people killed. I've been opposed to the war on Iraq since day one, but I don't put that on my brothers in arms, I put it on our commander in chief. The way I see it is if I tow the line for six months, then I send someone home who would have had to tow that line in my place. I'm a fire team leader so I'll be responsible for the lives of four men.
If you ask most, they'll tell you they want to come home alive, or with all their limbs. My greatest fear is that I'll come home just fine, and that one of my men will not. I suppose that's something that the public can't understand."