Ironic twist to supporting the war or just plain typical?
Gramps told me the other day that my second (or is it third) cousin Andrew, a marine, was being sent to Iraq. Not that big of a surprise since the marines are usually cannon fodder for any given military movement. But it’s kind of weird that it’s my cousin being sent and not some other unfortunate soul who I’ve never heard of. My gramps that was in WWII has never supported the war in Iraq and has always been pretty liberal. My first cousin, Casey, has been in the Navy for a while now. He was originally stationed in Okinawa, Japan but is now on some god forsaken island off of the San Diego coast. He’ll probably get out of the navy without ever seeing battle, definitely a good thing in my humble opinion since he’s been brainwashed enough as it is.
Anyway, Gramps was saying that it was ironic that our family has two grandsons in the military right now. The one that supports the war has his grandson on the front lines with the marines in Iraq fighting the war that has been long over for some times. Gramps who hates Bush and doesn’t support the war has his grandson home (seemingly) safe at home on a homeland naval base.
Odd?
Well, I don’t know, I guess I agree. But for me, it’s stranger when I think about my cousin (who I’ve only spent time with once) being in Iraq. Now when I see the MSNBC .NET Alerts pop up in Messenger about US soldiers being killed I notice them more. I notice them when they say 5 marines killed in bombing. I’ve looked at the growing list of names, I haven’t seen my cousins yet, but 4 more years, a lot can happen.
Despite the fact I really don’t have any close ties to Andrew I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for him and every other soldier over there fighting for nothing. They serve no purpose at all except to possibly secure a few more barrels of oil which are oh so precious as the planet starts to finally run out. There’s no freedom in Iraq and there certainly won’t be any in the next 4 years. We certainly aren’t any more secure than we used to be by being in Iraq either, the only real thing to come out of Iraq will be further hatred for America and what that other half stands for. Americans are dead wrong if they think we’re somehow safer from “terrorism” than we used to be. Heck, I’m sure we’ve probably got a few more radical liberal terrorists even more pissed off since the election on Tuesday. I can only imagine the headlines when a few of them got together and decided to drive a pickup truck filled with liquid explosives to the Reagan Center while Bush and Cheney were giving their 4 more years speeches. That’s terrorism, it’s all around you, it’s not the fear of some Iraqis catching a flight from Fallujah and taking a bomb to the next football game. The only way to start the explosion of terrorism is to stop pissing other people off around the planet and promoting peace. Till then this country is screwed and any halfway insane American can just decide to make a few good pipe bombs and start blowing stuff up. Anyway, I’m getting away from what this post was about…
I really hope I get a chance to speak with Andrew once he comes back, not about what it was like over there, but if he truly believes it really mattered. Till then, good luck.
Tags: Home Life, News, Outside
