The Average Soldier

I get a lot of military email, some positive and some negative. I was impressed by this one from Johnny:

Hi Mr. Rall,
I saw you on Foxnews a few times, and while I disagreed with some of the things you said, I went to your site and check back on it about once a week. I know that you can’t just always believe everything you are told and sometimes the opposition is right. I do have a problem with how you treat the military though. I have been in ROTC for the past four years and as soon as I am done my masters I am going to commission fulfilling my contract. I contracted four years ago because I wanted to serve my country and “fight the good fight” against anyone who tried to do our country harm. Many of my fellow cadets are in the same boat as me, came from an average family, good students, ( I have a 3.9 cum GPA now ), just wanting to do our service, finish it, and move on with your lives. We could have never predicted what we would eventually have to end up doing and where we would be going but it is the government, and you can’t back out once you’ve signed the dotted line. We were not recruited and lied to, we went into it knowing full well what we were getting into. There are many many many great people in the Army ( and other branches ). Many joined for training opportunities or just to do their duty. Yet all I ever see in your comics/other writings, is disdain for the military, continually calling all of us torturers and gun wielding fanatics. While some have done such things, it embarrasses many of us to be in the same military as them. They are not soldiers out of line, they are criminals. But you must see that many of us are just normal guys that signed up for a job because we wanted to, and therefore we must do what we are required to. Foreign policy is not our fault, it is the governments. We are supposed to clean up the mess when the government can’t seal the deal. Please reconsider your stance on the average soldier, blame the government for where we are all you want, but I know that when you portray soldiers in the light you do, it really hurts me and many of my colleagues that someone would look down on us, when we are just trying to do something positive for our country. I am sorry for the length of this e-mail but after following your web site for a little over a year now, I felt it was time to voice myself and hopefully get your opinion on this subject at hand. Thank you

Point taken. The vast majority of soldiers have not (presumably) engaged in the sort of atrocities committed daily at US concentration camps like Abu Ghraib and Bagram. But let’s get real: people join the military in order to kill people. Or, at bare minimum, they’re willing to kill people. That’s what the military does, and everybody understands that. I doubt that even the lyingest son-of-a-bitch recruiter claims otherwise.

Unfortunately, dutiful soldiers get lumped in with the sadists when they refuse to stand tall, in public, to denounce those whose behavior disgraces the armed services. Especially disconcerting to those of us who wish to believe the best about the men and women serving in uniform is the way they applaud criminal mass murderers like George W. Bush at public appearances–e.g., the notorious “mission accomplished” appearance. It is also sad to see so few soldiers prosecuted for refusing to serve in the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Mass resistance, even from 1 percent of the armed forces, would prompt the kind of national reconsideration that might bring an end to Bush’s madness, and yet it’s not forthcoming.

One last point: career soldiers who enlisted before Bush can be excused for being stuck fighting wars which they may or may not believe to be justified. But anyone who enlisted since–or in the future–is fully aware of what he or she is getting into.