I've often mentioned that I come from a long line of military folks. Back generation after generation after generation. Service was just a given. When your nation was at war you didn't want to get drafted, you enlisted, put on a uniform, and fought. It is that simple.
Now of course we are all shaped by the lives we live. And being around military people my entire life, living on or near military bases (including now) has shaped my world view. Before I say what I am about to say below the fold, please know that I can count on my one hand the military people, those in uniform, that have any desire to kill another human.
But we don't live in an always friendly world. Sometimes force is needed. It just seems to me less and less people know what it is to serve.
Here is one grandfather with my dad and grandmother. He was a HUMP flight surgeon. Enlisted the day after he married my grandmother and finished his residence.
Here is my other grandfather, waiting to ship out.
Never waited for the draft.
I'd post a similar photo of my father, but he was finishing his PhD when the Vietnam War was ongoing. He broke both his legs jumping out of a plane during military high school and could never pass the physical. Haunts him to this day. I think that he spent 30+ years teaching military tactics for the Air Force when he could have made a lot more money doing other things is partly cause of this.
In the first few years after 9/11 I didn't feel any guilt. Our military seemed to have things under control. Then things started to change. I'd see news stories or the IGTN here where a solider was going to their second, third, or fourth deployment. Ugh!
Not that long ago things like this would never happen in this country. There would be a draft. Other folks would step up. Alas we don't see much of that.
I couldn't compute.
To paraphrased a line from Raising Arizona, after 9/11 I found myself driving by military recruitment offices that are not on the way home. It just didn't feel right. It feels so much more wrong now. They don't want my old ass. It pains me at levels I can't express I can't enlist.
People under 30 ought to be standing up and offering to take on some load. You don't have to think the war is right or wrong. A small number of our fellow Americans are bearing all of these wars on their shoulders, by themselves. It ain't right.
OK rant ended .... just pissed off .....