Yes, we are the people of the United States of America, but our citizenship and allegience thereto doesn't grant us the right to take for granted the soldiers' decisions to put themselves in harm's way. To me a volunteer military force is a gift, especially since its members proudly defend other nations as well as this one. It's a dangerous job and it doesn't pay well, the hours are long, the stress is intense and there are precious few liberties allowed to active service men and women. So the least we can do for them is let them do the job they continuously train for. We should have the guts to send our troops to war without feeling guilty or apprehensive about it. The burdon does fall upon our leaders to choose wars wisely, but when it comes to keeping soldier's deaths to a minimum we have colonels and generals to take care of them.
And really, compared to the other wars we've fought this one has been relatively safe, by which I mean that our leaders have never been this careful with human life before. People use the term 'cannon fodder' to describe the dead soldiers, and that's insulting. As willing as they are to make the greatest sacrifice, we have been unwilling to let them be killed. No soldier has died that hasn't been sorely missed, none were expendable, and each was an asset to the military.
Above all, those soldiers were killed by the enemy, not by the leaders of the USA. The troops were sent out to fight, not to die, and they've done a lot more fighting than dying. Since the invasion was completed they've been doing work they were not properly trained for and yet they have done a wonderful job. Though soldiers still die every week it is still the enemy that does the killing. Only now that the enemy has no official army, those killings can rightly be called murders and the murderers should be prosecuted and executed. Even though they are still in grave danger, if the troops should return now and leave the job unfinished then murders would multiply in their absence. Ultimately, though soldiers are trained to kill, their charge is to preserve life and that is precisely how they have been used in this conflict.
The funny thing about them, Albed, is that if given the choice to fight or not a soldier would always choose to fight.
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