A Soldier’s Perspective

This is dedicated to my husband who is a soldier. I love you for being you.

I would like to start out with those famous words of Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” As a soldier, though I am trained to follow orders, to not examine my life in what I do and why I do it would prove living meaningless. To not think and analyze my life, I might as well be a robot. “To be or not to be,” is really the question I find myself asking at times. Do I obey blindly of what I am told, even if it goes against what I believe? Or do I dare stand up and say, “This is wrong!” It is a dilemma that comes up often especially now that we are in a time of war.

In the past of couple of years, I have come to realize why we really fight this war in Iraq—and it is not the “War on Terror,” that we have come so often to believe. For one thing, we were led into the war in Iraq under false pretenses; there were no weapons of mass destruction. And, furthermore Congress is supposed to declare war as stated in our Constitution, but that did not happen. Also, we are supposed to be finding Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but the focus is always on Iraq—which mind you, had nothing to do with the horrendous terror act that occurred on September 11, 2001.

I had agreed on the invasion of Iraq in the beginning because I was led to believe that there were weapons of mass of destruction and also to take out Saddam Hussein who was supposedly out of control killing his own people. I find myself asking why we are not in, take for example, North Korea and remove Kim Jong-il? He is just as bad of a dictator as Hussein was. The more research I have done on these matters the more I am disgusted at what this administration has done. I find that President’s Bush’s family involvement with oil companies and Vice-President Cheney’s involvement in the company Halliburton are very questionable. After all, Iraq holds the world’s second largest reserve of oil.

I no longer believe we are there in Iraq to “fight for freedom,” as we are often told over and over again by this administration and other supporters of this war. If anything, the fight for freedom is right here on American soil. When President Bush passed the Patriot Act, and pretty much reduced our Constitution and the Bill of Rights to just being a piece of paper, I have come to see that our sovereignty is under a dire threat. Also, the executive orders that he has passed while being President has given him dictatorial powers that no president in history has ever done is what makes this situation even worse.

After stating the case for my dilemma as a soldier, as you can see, I do not support this administration’s actions--though, I am supposed to obey President Bush as my leader. I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.” Interestingly, I just noticed that defending and supporting the Constitution was first on my oath. Of course second on the oath, is to obey the President and my commanding officers. Therefore, my question is do I obey a President that does not obey the Constitution? Is this not called hypocrisy? I ask what does a soldier do, better yet what does a human being do? Though, I am a soldier, I am first a human being.

And, wherein does my loyalty lie, to my God who created me or to my country that I am called to serve? My answer simply is this, God created me to be a decent human being to make sure that I follow the Golden Rule of treating others as I would like to be treated and to follow moral laws, such as truth, justice, and mercy—how can I deny this as my first and absolute loyalty? Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and would defend it if there was just cause, but there is no justice when soldiers are in harm’s way and some that are already killed because of the interests of this current administration; also, innocent Iraqi civilians are dying for what? These people are dying for power hungry warmongers that’s what. And, I believe I am justified in what I am saying according to my rights in the First Amendment.

Alexander Hamilton has said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” I feel that my personal journey in seeking truth whether, it be religious, political or philosophical, if I don’t stand for what I believe in, then I will have fallen from the liberty and freedom that Our Creator has endowed us with. In this case of our current war, if I don’t stand up and say, “This is wrong,” then I would have been held captive and have fallen for the lies and corruption that this government has engaged in. From what I have pondered and analyzed, it is worthy to examine my life because it allows me and others to know that I am human.