Does anyone have loved ones in the Military?

Left active duty in 2000, recalled from inactive reserve in 2002, spent time in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, but not Iraq. I separated after serving out the remainder of my inactive reserve time.

My brother is in the National Guard and is currently serving his third tour downrange, second in Iraq. And, since I’m from a military town, I have several high school classmates who have served downrange or are there now, including one who was killed in action.

To this day I still don’t know how I personally feel about the war in Iraq, I’m really torn between the administration’s wider reasons for going to war, and between what people are actually doing over there. But I will say that I have more issues with how it was fought than why. The lack of preparation for what happened over there blows my mind, especially since many mid level officers predicted we’d be going through what we are now, and tried to advise their superiors, to no avail.

My brother is tired of it. He did not expect to be spending almost three years deployed when he signed up for the Guard. But, he’s keeping positive about the whole thing, and should be home soon.

Another thing that made us both mad is that this is a contractor’s war, in which civilians have been hired to do this and that, while several times support for active duty military has come up really short. It’s about the damn cash for some people, nothing more.

krittytang- I greatly appreciate what your father is doing and how hard it is for your family.

but please understand, this war had nothing to do with 9/11. If you believe this, you are mistaken. There was NOT ONE terrorist from Iraq that acted on 9/11. No Iraqi attacked the United States. The majority of 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi. We owe it to our soldiers to understand what this war is about and how it started.

Yes, my father is an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) in the Air Force. While I am proud of him, I am extremely scared because he is being deployed to what he says to be Saudi Arabia, but I think he’s going to Iraq and not telling us (like he did last time) so we don’t worry.

I would rather finish the war so the terrorists don’t attack us again, and than we’ll have to through all of this, again.

I have a few friends with kids in the military, but no immediate family. I know a couple whose son just joined the marines, and they are very upset. They recruited him right out of high school. He was 18 already and they couldn’t do anything about it. They are hoping and praying he doesn’t get sent to Iraq. They are very much against the war, and don’t want to see their son put in harms way over lies and greed.

yea I do.. my brothers in the army and I havent seen him in a year he has definately into a monster I dont even know who he is any more he finaly came bac from afganestan and called me and told me I could call any time so I did and he told me to leave him alone and stop calling his phone because he’s on a date I would think that after a year he would want to hear from me his lil sister but no another girl that he just wanted to bag was more important than me it made me cry