When reading the book and the story of Kwame Mensah who was a marine who didn't want to fight in the gulf war, one of the things that I kept thinking was why did you join the military? You had to have known that there would be a small chance that you would have to go and fight.
I know that there are several different circumstances that make people sign up, for some they think this is the only option, it's a way to pay for school, and sometimes you might not get all of the facts. But still how could you not know you might have to go to war? I don't want to seem that I don't respect these soldiers opinions, because I do and part of me is not all surprised that some of these men changed there minds once they were in the army or navy or whatever.
I'm also not surprised that the government does all they can to stop soldiers from speaking against the military. After all it's pretty much a slap in the face, these men are representing our country and now they want out, doesn't send out a good message. So they make the process to get discharged as difficult as possible and damn near impossible.
1 comment:
It's a really complicated issue and I hear where you are coming from. I think sometimes people get talked into joining and they think they are going to have some sort of position that won't involve any real "action" - I heard of one person who joined because they were told they would be in the drum and bugle corp and they ended up being trained to use weapons and were expected to fight. Sometimes it's also people feel they are willing to fight for our country and they assume it will be in our country defending our citizens and then they are thrown into a very unpopular war and are suddenly responsible for killing innocent people - a pretty heavy burden for anyone but for someone with serious doubts about being there, I think it's a dangerous situation. If someone doesn't want to be there, they are really putting all the other soldiers in even more danger.
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