The Souls of Military Folks

You are about to read a paper I submitted for a Poltiical Science class I took last year at the University of Washington. The class was American Political Thought: 1865-Present, and was a survey of the political/economical/social thinking of America’s foremost leaders. In this paper, I wrote about W.E.B. Du Bois “The Souls of Black Folk”, and Du Bois’ emphasis of double consciousness for African Americans, which is a term he used to discuss how African Americans see themselves in a white world. I ran with this idea and wrote about how today’s military has developed its own double consciousness. If we continue on the present track of having our troops deploy to combat two, three, four, five, even six times, we are creating a small minority of Americans who will not be like you or I. All I can say to the stupidity of the Iraq war is – What if it was your child? Your son or daughter? With less than 2 million Americans (the writer included) having served in Iraq, and more than 350 million people in this country, shouldn’t more of a burden be placed on others? Hasn’t our military done enough? Why don’t we save some money (like $10 billion a month), bring them home, let them have more than a year to spend with their families before redeploying them back, and start the rebuilding and restructuring our military needs so that when the next big war happens (it hasn’t yet,) they will be able to fight effectively and adequately. “We go to war with the Army we have” – Donald Rumsfeld. To that, I say “No, we go to war with the very best or we don’t go at all.”

Veterans hope presidential candidates are listening

Last night’s debate was “more of the same” from our presidential candidates:

We didn’t hear about Jim and Jane the veterans because they have either been recalled out of the IRR after already deploying several times, recuperating in a post or VA hospital near you, or just trying to fit back into normal civilian society. Veterans are only mentioned by politicians to get votes – its the race to the bottom to see who is the vets’ best friend. I wish Obama had mentioned McCain earning a rank of “D” for support of veterans issues, especially when he claims he is the best friend a veteran can have. McCai will be another third term for Bush – another president that says he supports the troops, but fails to act on it. If there were 17 million veterans instead of 1.7 million, this election would have a much different feel to it. Would the veterans voting debacle almost have happened in Ohio if this was the case? I don’t think so… We all owe IAVA a debt of gratitude for protecting our brotherts and sisters in arms’ right to vote as they perform the true act of citizenry: serving our nation in the military.