Monday, July 09, 2007

Damn War

My 19 year old son’s best friend joined the Air Force right out of high school. He was promised a mechanic’s slot, which is his career goal. He made a choice between trade school and the service, feeling the education he got in the service would be superior to trade school. The sonsabitches yanked his mechanic job and made him an MP. He just got orders – while he can’t officially acknowledge it, he’ll be accompanying truck convoys from Kuwait to Iraq.

Fuckers.

9 comments:

ashmc2 said...

That truly sucks. But sadly if the US is at war and sign-up you pretty much have to expect to go no matter what you sign-up up for. That is the nature of the beast.

I have a friend that is 32 year's old and he just signed up for the Guards because the give a nice sign-up bonus and he is still paying off his college loan from 10 years prior. He has 3 kids, but once 16 weeks of training are over, I bet he becomes active.

IMO, we went in for the right reasons (OK, some of the right reasons) but it is time to let the take the bull by the horns and keep their own gorvernment in power.

Later, Ash out...

Jon said...

We went into Afghanistan for the right reasons, we went into Iraq for no other reason than to protect American interests (oil).

I agree, when you join the service in a time of war, you expect to be in a war zone. But everything combined on this is really too bad.

Unknown said...

That's awful, Jon - I'm so sorry about your son's friend. I KNOW several former Military Recruiters, and they will promise ANYTHING to meet their "quotas". I've asked them "so HOW do you get someone who is THIS (hard to find skill and well paid already) to join the SERVICE?", and they were incredibly smooth, laying on the gimmicks. It's a real shame your son's friend got sucked in.

What makes it worse is this war SUCKS and we never should have been over there to begin with - I mean HELLO? Have we found any Weapons of Mass Destruction? Does anyone REMEMBER the original reason we are there???? No, we get brainwashed with new reasons each time, new "names" for the war. It's morphed into I don't even know what now.

But those Military Recruiters...your son's friend was right...one thing the military does do well, is train, because they were good.

Anonymous said...

Your son's friend (and all the soldiers) will be in my thoughts!

-Stacy

Jon said...

KS - I agree with you on this topic. It gets my blood boiling every time I hear about a kid in our community that won't be coming home, or coming home a changed person.

M2M - Good to hear from you! Thanks for the thoughts, it's much appreciated. You should hear my daughters pray for him every night, it's touching. They pray for a dozen or so people every night, but this boy is in their prayers EVERY night.

gen said...

damn war is right.

i'm so heated about the topic that i can't even post about it. he's in my thoughts too.

Jon said...

Thanks, Gen. With a little luck we'll get some common sense in office shortly.

Anonymous said...

so sorry to hear about your son's friend. he will be in my thoughts. my cousin joined the national guard straight out of high school (his only reason of joining was for college tuition) he was one of the first to die in this false war. this was 2003 in kuwait. i'm still angry and my heart breaks every time i hear a story like this. gw is out of control and needs to be stopped---now. have you heard of mike gravel? what are your thoughts on him? he's our only hope as far as i'm concerned. or possibly ron paul. hillary and obama are telling us what we want to hear but they're not fighting to end this war. they give in to gw every single time. not leaders in my opinion. (ok, i know i shouldn't be chatting politics...i'll stop!) hope all is well.

Jon said...

Kim - I'm so sorry about your cousin, that's heartbreaking. I have heard of Mike Gravel, unfortunately I don't think he's electable at this point. And that's a shame.