I was in the army for four years starting in November of 2001. By the end of my time I knew it wasn't for me. I didn't like that I had no choice in my life. The army decides everything. When I first joined I was single and care free. I would go anywhere and do anything. I spent a year in South Korea and really had a great time.
More after the fold.
My goals in life changed drastically when I met my wife, also a soldier, and we started a family. Being in the army is terrible for families, especially now with the Iraq war going on. I wouldn't have been against going when I was single, but married with children is entirely different. Long deployments are bad for everyone in the family, and that's if no one gets injured or killed while over there. So when my time came up to reenlist, I didn't.
One thing many people don't realize is that when you join the army, even if it's only for 2yrs, you have an 8 year commitment. However many years you join up for active army is subtracted from 8, and what ever number you get is how long you will serve in the inactive reserves after you complete your active portion. So no matter what you sign up for, you get at least an 8 year commitment. I signed up for 4 years active, and 4 years inactive. Inactive didn't really mean anything before Iraq because they had no need to pull you from inactive to active. When I was getting out of active I knew of a few people that had already gotten pulled from inactive. My job (MOS) in the army was fixing electronic military intelligence systems. My MOS is a shortage MOS, meaning they never have as many of us as they want to. Since my chances were pretty high that I would be activated and sent to Iraq, I decided to join the Texas National guard. They gave me 2yrs stability (meaning I can't deploy), and a decent bonus. They would pay for college classes and would also give me an extra few hundred dollars a month for drilling.
Gambling with 2yrs instead of 4yrs seemed like the better bet, especially since they were paying me also. It seemed like a good idea, but it didn't work. My unit is going to Afghanistan, and they fully intend to take me with them. I'll be starting training probably in September, and once I start I'll basically be gone for 5 months. At the end of the 5 months I'll go to Afghanistan, supposedly only for 9 months. The only good thing about it is that when I come back my contract will be completely fulfilled and they can never touch me again, even if they add a draft (supposedly). What really sucks is that even though I'm going to be deploying (perhaps because I'm deploying), my civilian job is still going to send me on two business trips. One of them will be 4 weeks long, and the other one will be 3 weeks long. The four week long one will be in Austin, so my wife and kids can visit me, but I will be very busy.
I'll give more info about it later once I know more about it.
I can certainly sympathize, if not exactly empathize. I have a friend who just got back from a year in Korea. It's not just the deployment that's hard in itself, but the readjustment to living together again, as I'm sure you already know.
ReplyDeleteI've never served in the military. After hearing about it from my father, an uncle, and a cousin who had all served, and none of whom particularly liked it, I figured it wasn't for me. Meeting more people from the military now that I live in a town with an Air Force base, and hearing their stories, I'm even more certain I wouldn't like the military. Still, there's a part of me that feels guilty for not serving, and I'm very, very grateful to all the people who do put their lives on the line to defend people like me.
(Actually, I guess another reason why I question joining the military, aside from all the B.S. that goes on, is to question whether the mission I was on was really the right one. Some missions obviously seem right. Afghanistan in modern history, and WWII going back a few years certainly seem like cases where military action on our part was justified. But then other wars, like Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq, don't seem so easily justified. And from what I understand, you don't really get much choice in where you get deployed - you go where you're commanded. I asked an ex Army guy I know about that, and he said he justified it to himself, by knowing that whether or not he personally was in the Army, the Army would have been in Iraq, anyway. At least he could do his best to make sure that other soldiers around him were being good soldiers, and not attacking civilians or some of the other less honorable stories you hear coming out of war zones. Still, I'd have a hard time participating in something I didn't believe in.)
Thank you for the support.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean when you are talking about unjustified wars. I think it's interesting that you think Afghanistan is more justified than Iraq. If anything, the amount of attacks and brutality of the Iraq war shows how much more important it is for us to be there. The morals and values of many Iraqis are horribly skewed.
I think there are three things that we did wrong in Iraq. First, we didn't go in there sooner.
Second, we assumed that there were enough decent people in the country to take over after we overthrew their asshole dictator.
Third, unlike everyone thinks, we didn't go over there for the oil. We don't take their oil. In fact, we let them sell us their oil, letting their country profit, while we spend billions rebuilding their country. The whole time we are building up their schools, hospitals, power networks, etc, they are busy blowing it up. The quality of life has gone down for Iraqis not because of Americans, but because of their fellow country men. I say we take as much oil as we want as payment for freeing them.
My opinions of the war are drastically different than most people's, especially atheists. As a soldier I am in the military intelligence branch. I was in South Korea before we were in Iraq. I worked in a secure facility that had access to a lot of information that I'm not allowed to talk about, and most people will never see. I do not doubt the reasons that we went to Iraq, because I've seen many of those reasons with my own eyes. I wish that the information was released, and that we could talk about it. It would seriously change the way that Americans and the world looked at the war in Iraq. I don't expect you to trust me on that, for the obvious reason that I wouldn't trust someone who couldn't offer up proof either.
I think that just the way the country's soccer team was tortured was reason enough to overthrow the regime.
I think this reply is getting to long, maybe I should make a new post in the next few days.