The Military and Automatic Respect

I decided to write a blog on my personal feelings of the military and I know that for some of you this will be a touchy subject and will probably make many of you angry but, allow me to explain.

I’ve never been one to associate with the military as I wasn’t raised up in it or exposed to it in any way. I didn’t have any real strong feelings about soldiers until recently and now I have enough in my mind to write this blog. A few months ago, I was sitting in my car at a convenience store and I saw a man and woman walk through the parking lot and both of them had their uniform on. i’m assuming Army based on the color of the uniform. As they were slowly walking by, the woman turned to the man and said “Watch this, when we walk in we will get automatic respect, I love wearing my uniform out in public because people are always thanking me for my service and giving me discounts”. I became very angry about this and I thought “Wow, so you walk around in your uniform just to get people to bow down to you and to give you nearly free items”. I don’t know how many of you would have felt hearing that but for me, it was so shallow and made me feel like they just were looking for attention.

My opinion the military is this: I feel that wars are no longer about protecting our country and I do not feel that soldiers are fighting for our freedom and here’s why, President Bush would often get on National Television and make threats to the Middle East. He would have selfish motives that was putting our country in danger to begin with and by picking a fight with people who have nothing to lose, was just asking for our country to be attacked. After viewing a lot of footage concerning 9/11 it became clear that it was not the work of terrorists at all, as a matter of fact the facts that were given stated it was one type of plane when in fact, it was a different type of plane and I along with many others, feel like this was something that was planned by our own government. No, I’m not paranoid and no I’m not one to follow many conspiracy theories but, looking at facts alone, it’s clear that it was not a terrorist attack. You may do the research yourself and you will find out the exact same thing as I did.

President Obama has followed in the footsteps of Bush and has made several announcements on TV of attacking the Middle East and sending the military out to do what he and Bush are too afraid to do themselves. So often these family members of the soldiers are left alone for months or even a year or more to fend for their self while their husband or wife is gone away at war. Have you noticed that we don’t actually have freedom and especially not nearly as much as we did before these Middle East conflicts started? As a matter of fact, our freedoms are being taken from us every day. Now we have a government who insists on even taking our freedom of religion away from us and freedom of speech is completely out of the question or a person can be imprisoned. The only reason anyone would have to protect our country now is because our president’s have pissed off people in the Middle East and now they are taking it out the American people as if we have some responsibility in our president’s poor decisions.

When many war veterans are no longer of use to the Military, often times they come back and are forgotten and left homeless, broke and with PTSD. The government doesn’t care, the president doesn’t care and many people in the United States won’t lift a finger to help. So knowing all of these things, why would you support the Military and the Troops? Why should anyone put their self in a position to do the dirty work of the President just to come back broken and broke? I especially, will not give automatic respect to someone who voluntarily signed up for this and are simply doing a job just like everyone else in the working world, especially to people like the one’s I saw at the store who use their uniform in a disgraceful manner to get freebies and thank you’s. Many of you may hate me after this blog but seriously, I feel that I should be able to reserve the right to tell it like I see it and if you think about it, it honestly makes sense.

Adding to this blog: My grandfather was in the Korean War, he was in the army and when he came back he started drinking very heavily and he was very intimidated by various different noises and people. He became an angry person that no one recognized and he would tell stories of the horrors. He did not sign up for the military, he was drafted. He said that being in the military was something that was common then and that people were told they were fighting for one thing, when much like today, it’s for selfish reasons. I guess you could say that his being in the military basically killed him, since he was never the same again after returning home and basically lived his life in a never ending nightmare.  He said that it was just like having a standard job except much longer hours and that you just became numb to killing people. I’m sorry but, I cant see how a life like that would benefit anyone.