I'm currently on my Annual Training (14 days) with the Army National Guard at the time of this posting, something which has already begun to make my studying and completing work for my classes exceptionally difficult. Anyhow, I noticed something today as I was zoning out while standing in the line entering the building for dinner (chow hall line). All the soldiers standing with M-16 rifles laughing, joking, and overall acting like the weapons were not even in their hands. I thought to myself, "These are machines created to end life, to murder. But we treat them so casually, like an ordinary thing." Now right away you may think, "But you are soldiers, of course weapons should be familiar to you!" But should they really? Just think about that. How should any group of people in our country feel that it is even ok to act so natural and casual with weapons designed for murder? Shouldn't we feel the weight of our weapon? But we don't.
So why is this? In a time where the USA is invading, yes I said INVADING, other countries and murdering, yes, MURDERING, other countries for something as pathetic as control over those nations, we seem to think that we are justified and doing the right thing. But that's nothing new. We, as Americans, always believe every action we do in the world is just and right. That we are an unbiased force of good that needs to heal an otherwise evil, broken world. Who the **** are we to hold such ideas?! Where do these ideas come from? (I won't go into detail how many horrible crimes, most often related to rape and murder, our soldiers stationed around the world commit. Reality!) Perhaps a strong re-enforcer of our image as the automatic good guys comes from movies and television. In our movies, the Americans, wherever they go and whatever they do, appear as great liberators and heroes. We rescue foreign children from wars and disasters, we save old farmers or beautiful young women (often met with the woman giving herself to the 'big strong' American savior), and annihilate all the enemies that are said are the 'bad guys' Heck, we often don't even need to know details most of the time. Just if we see someone attacking the American military in any way the attacker is automatically viewed as evil and bad. But given the details, and looking objectively, we may very well have been the ones who were 'bad'. We do after all hold one of the highest records of civilian causalities in the many wars we have participated in. The greater good? Bull. What about the news? The way the news talks about the rest of the world makes us seem like the only civilized country on Earth. So we get in our minds that we are the ones who must fix all those "underprivileged, uncivilized" nations. Yet, those of us who hold such ignorant ideals more than likely never lived anyway BUT here, so I guess, while it can't be condoned, can at least be understood.
Anyway, again I seem to have sidetracked quite a bit. But the point is that we as Americans seem to have reached a point where we believe invading other countries and killing is a normal, expected, and necessary thing. Few of us even question it. And finally when we do begin to question it, we give in to the lie and scam of national security when our government and media tries to scare us with terrorism threats. It just doesn't end. I may be a soldier but I will never be able to carry a weapon without feeling its weight, without knowing, understanding, and fearing what it is designed to do. There's no glory in it. There is no hollywood type adventure that comes with it. It's just for killing, plain and simple.
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