Volunteering to Participate

I'm sick of hearing the Left moan over the dead and wounded American (mostly) military in Iraq. As the invading force, they are so much more responsible for their own misfortunes than are the totally innocent tens-of-thousands of Iraqi civilians and military who were slaughtered on their own soil. The deaths of the Iraqis are more important than those of the Americans, and will go down in history as such.

The Bush Administration is of course primarily responsible for the deadly acts of massive violence the United States has inflicted upon Iraq since March, 2003. However, since the U.S. military is not composed of servicemen gleaned from a mandatory draft, then American soldiers do, indeed, share in the blame for the deaths of Iraqis.

When an American kid signs up for the military he, by default, accepts and shares responsibility for the actions of his employer. Without shared responsibility, there would be chaos. If employees of a company failed to voluntarily abide by the policies and procedures of their employer, there would be total disruption of company function and the company would collapse. If a significantly large number of our uniformed servicemen decide that killing Iraqis is wrong, our occupation would devolve into an uncontrollably chaotic mess, and they would have to rapidly withdraw from the Middle East in order to secure their survival. As long as the military establishment is able to successfully brainwash their recruits into supporting and following any command, the power and influence of the U.S. military remains unfazed.

I'm all for a militia that defends my freedom from attack by foreign invasion. I even support a militia that will travel to foreign soil to squelch the barbarous slaughter of innocent civilians by unlawful murderers and terrorists. However, I do not support any military, even my own country's, that invades a sovereign nation for the sole purpose of deposing a single individual at the expense of the disruption of the entire nation and the unrestricted murder of multiple numbers (much less tens of thousands) of completely innocent human beings, who, like ourselves, only want to defend themselves.

Name one single American who has died, as the result of the effort of even one Iraqi citizen in the past year, outside the Iraqi border. Or, name one single Iraqi who has been killed by Americans, during the same period of time, outside the border of Iraq. Go ahead.

When we say we don't support the Bush Administration's decisions to invade Iraq and slaughter the masses, but we do support our soldiers who are doing the slaughtering, do we really believe that, or are we just trying to sound like morally righteous high-roaders? These American soldiers VOLUNTEERED for the military and its consequences.

If conscription was the law of the land, then I could not fault American servicemen for their actions, done under the threat of their own survival in America. But that's not the case here.

I'm sorry, but any American soldier who wounds or murders an Iraqi is at least partially guilty of a crime. No one forces our current troops to pull the trigger. No one forced them to board the carrier or plane headed to Iraq. No one forced then into boot camp, and no one forced them to walk into the recruitment office to sign the papers. I'm so sorry for families (spouses, parents and children) of servicemen who have been killed or severely wounded as a result of both their decision to join the military and the decisions of our godless, barbaric government that subsequently coerced them into carrying out their murderous mission. But we must be sure to fairly spread the blame for our immoral behavior as a nation not only to Bush and his merry band of henchmen, but also to those servants who volunteered to carry out the killings.

Do I hate America? No, I hate murderers.