(Cross posted at VetVoice.com)
I know that I'm supposed to be proud of my service. I know that I'm supposed to be glad when people thank me in the streets. I know that I'm supposed to enjoy the accolades and awards and balls that come from 2 tours in Iraq. I'm not. I want to be done being a veteran, but I can't.
In October of 2003, the United States committed one of the greatest foregn policy blunders in it's history. WIth the invasion of Iraq, our nation has managed to lose all of the support that the rest of the world had given us after the attacks on 9/11. It was an immoral, unethical, illegal, and embarrasingly poorly planned attack. I'm not proud to be a part of that, I'm just not.
I'm sure that I'm not the only one here who cringes just a touch everytime a person "thanks" us for their "freedom." I'm surely not the only one who wants to scream with every hand that they shake at welcome home events. And then, when they have the gall to ask us how the war is going, I can't be the only one who struggles not to scream that the war is wrong and that innocents are dying. I know I'm not alone on that.
But I am a veteran. I'm a veteran of a foreign war, and right or wrong, that means that people see my opinion on certain things as more valuable then it might otherwise have been. I am a veteran who participated in a war he felt was wrong, and I'm a veteran who knows that the war he fought in must end. As a veteran, I'm dedicated to fighting for veteran's benefits, whether they help me or someone else. I know that there is no one better fit then a veteran to make policy on matters of war. I know all of those things, and I know that I am one of the few who has fought.
And so, as tired as I might be, I will soldier on. I came back from my second, and hopefully last, deployment a couple of weeks ago, and my personal fight is just beginning. There are battles that need fought and I will fight them because it needs done. It would be easy to drift away and pretend that someone else will do the job that I am able to do, but I can't let myself do that. I'm glad to meet all of you, and I hope that, together, we can do all oc things that VoteVets is committed to doing.