Re: As a complete outsider .......
What we haven't covered here enough is the effect of this war on veterans. Since I graduated high school just after the Vietnam war and they were cutting back, I didn't end up joining. So about all I can do is use my mind reading powers.
Problem is there aren't all that many yet. They keep getting called back. Even some of those that already paid the ultimate price got letters to report for duty. There are toops going back for their third and fourth tours as we speak. A lot of recent vets have been serving from the get-go. They are called Reservists. These are soldiers that completed their military stints and signed on in the Reserves. Typically they mind the homefront so the active duty enlisted troops can go and do the fighting overseas. They usually train a few weekends each month and help out when natural disasters strike.
That's kinda why Hurricane Katrina was so devastating and why so many died AFTER the hurricane was over. There was nobody left here to help out, and those in charge seemed to have better things to do at the time. The Reservists were over in Iraq supplying the fighting forces along with most of their equipment.
With a lot of our youngsters seeing the Reservists going off to war on what seems like an endless rotation, fewer and fewer are liking the idea of joining the armed forces in the first place. So to make-up for the decline, the criteria people need to meet to join were drastically lowered. But even that isn't doing enough to help recruiters keep up with the demand. So I guess we'll have to wait awhile to answer that part. Becoming a veteran of this war is mostly on hold for now.
In all reality, this is an unpopular war for the most part, and that certainly has to weigh heavily on those that are called to fight it. Vietnam turned out to be more than unpopular. We also lost. And that made it even harder for those brave souls that fought that war because we kinda took it out on them when they came home. But hopefully we've learned our lesson from that war and treat this generation better than we treated that generation. The animosity seems well pinpointed at the top of the heap this time around because none of them went over there that time around, and the men and women on the ground have a great deal of support and appreciation from most all of us here back at home. Godspeed to one and all.
