If you have never served in the military, you have little grounds for staking out a military defense policy.
If you have never sworn that oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, you can not know what it's like.
If you've never assisted in loading five-hundred pound bombs on an F-18, like I have, you don't know what it does to your conscience.
Please don't take me wrong. I am "anti-war", that is, I believe violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Nobody hates me for my freedom. They may hate me and my country for our independence, for our privilege, and for the way we treat others, but nobody hates me for my freedom. They only envy it at best.
I have never served in a combat situation, but I was there and I was ready if the need arose. I kept those fighter jets up and enabled to kill people, and no doubt some of those jets have gone on to kill people since my time. That weighs heavily on my conscience.
But I served, and I would do it again, and if you have never served, then you can not know what it is like.
When you put on that uniform you become a different person. You become part of the unit, part of the defense, part of the whole that says no to war, but yes to defense if needs be. Yes to blood on my hands, and if there is a judgement to come then I will stand in the dock and continue my defense. I swore an oath to defend my country, and my fellow citizens of this country, and of the world.
There are alternatives to war, and one day perhaps we will see that all those alternatives must first be spent before going to war, but if we are attacked then we must fight back.
I'm too old now, fifty-five, to serve again, but I intend to keep serving by working in the Veteran's Administration after I finish college next spring. I don't know if there is any job I can do that the VA will hire me for, but if not then I'll find some volunteer work to do. There's lots of that to go around.
But if you've never served then don't tell me about war.