Almost ready to go

[aadler]

 
We’re on the edge of departure now. We don’t know when exactly (we never know when, not even when we’re sitting on an airfield with duffels stacked around us; when I mobilized to Afghanistan, we were trucked back to barracks twice before a suitable air window opened up), but it won’t be a lot longer.

So many things have changed since we arrived for pre-mobilization training, I long ago lost track. The roster, just in my detachment, has been reshuffled multiple times; we’ve lost people — to medical issues, personal issues, and movement to other detachments — gained others, lost them again … our overall numbers have held relatively steady, within one or two people, but it’s hard sometimes to keep track of just where we are.

We had a recent round of promotions. I was one of the lucky winners. I might or might not have time to manage one more promotion before I hit retirement age, but if I retired at my current rank it would be respectable. As it stands, though, after the latest ceremony, we literally have more chiefs than Indians. The main reason, of course, is that so many of us have already deployed before … and, if you’ve been there and done the job, they are going to put you in a leadership position. Only one of us, however, has ever worked in THIS job, so we’re still learning as we go.

I wonder at how our coming year of service will be affected by the current political climate. With the well-advertised shift of emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, we were advised last year to be prepared to switch from one theater to another partway through the tour. With the way things are moving in the world right now, we might want to be ready for Somalia, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran … Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be out of the question for us to find ourselves in Honduras, helping defend an actual democracy against the forces within and without that would like to turn it into something else. (The deposing of Honduran president Zelaya wasn’t a military coup. It was a legal action taken by people obeying Honduran law — the legislature, the Supreme Court, the army acting under lawful orders of civilian authority, even the man of Zelaya’s own party who accepted appointment as interim president and immediately announced that the elections already scheduled would take place as planned — against a chief executive who was attempting to perpetuate his own power by illegal action.) We live in interesting times, and my position has me seeing a lot of the results thereof.

I’ve done this before. I was a de facto volunteer the first time (in that I joined specifically in order to take part in a war that I could see was about to begin), a literal volunteer for the next two (signed waivers allowing my early re-mobilization shortly after returning from deployment), and I suppose the fact that I did early re-enlistment three years ago may serve to indicate that I’m going out this time, also, of my own will. Truth of the matter is, I’ve missed this, and I’m happy to be doing it again.

That doesn’t change my growing suspicion that the main purpose of the pre-deployment hoops they make us jump through is to make us so sick of the process that we’re joyful to get out of it, even if ‘out’ is a combat theater.

Comments

[physicsteach.livejournal.com]

Good luck and stay safe. My son is, barring bureaucratic SNAFU, entering the Marine Corps in a couple weeks, and I'm more mindful than ever of the sacrifices attendant to military service, and increasingly grateful to those who serve.

Apropos of nothing, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the solider who has fought deployment on the grounds that the President's orders are illegal, because, he claims, Mr. Obama wasn't born in the US.

[aadler]

Each time I prepare to deploy, I’m jolted yet again by two sets of people. First, those who’ve been out before, usually several times before, and are looking without regret to doing it all over again. Second, the new ones, many of them teenagers and many of them prior service coming back in after long absences (there are a lot of forty- and fifty-year-old corporals and specialists in today’s military), joining an unpopular war that’s been going on long enough for the glamor to have worn off. I have to keep reminding myself that, yes, I’ve been in both groups, and qualify — I guess — for the same respect I accord them. Even accidental inclusion in such company is honor beyond anything I expected.

And Marines … I’m not comfortable being around Marines, because I know that every single one of them even more highly embodies the virtues in which I feel myself to be deficient. You have every reason for pride, and probably a bit of bewilderment.

Insofar as the last question, my position probably isn’t what many of those who know me might expect. The President is the son of an American citizen, which automatically confers citizenship upon him unless he for any reason was disqualified thereby or otherwise renounced it. There are rumors that he may have done the latter at some point in his life, but they remain exactly that — rumors — unless proof is brought to bear. When we join the U.S. military, if we’re paying any attention to the oath, we promise to serve. Not to serve if we agree, or if it isn’t uncomfortable or unreasonable or politically distasteful; we swear to serve as ordered.

I had the great good fortune (purely by accident, I never foresaw the need) to end my first term of service before there was ever a moment when I would have had to acknowledge Bill Clinton as my commander-in-chief, or been required by law to salute a man who had evinced such contempt for the armed services and lied so systematically to avoid ever serving in them. Having dodged that bullet, I’m willing to show some good humor in serving under someone who doesn’t share my values but nonetheless hasn’t shown himself to be a despicable human being and a disgrace to the nation that bore him.

That answer the question?

[physicsteach.livejournal.com]

It does indeed answer my question, thank you.

I read somewhere, long before Mr. Obama was on the political radar, about relinquishing U.S. citizenship. It's not impossible, but it is difficult, and leaves an indelible bureaucratic trail. More importantly, it is a PUBLIC action, published in the Federal Register. So in this case, rumors are pretty good evidence that it didn't happen, or Fox News Channel would have found the evidence pretty quickly.

Here's a link to a description of the process:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/28201/renounce_us_citizenship_process_and.html

[aadler]

Actually, it appears that my original view was slightly inaccurate. If, as claimed by the article here, Obama truly was born outside the U.S., to a mother too young to meet the Constitutional requirements for conferring citizenship on her offspring by a foreign father, then the issue is real, legitimate and direct. I have no particular enthusiasm for using the law to deny political candidacy, and I dislike conspiracy theories simply on aesthetic grounds … but the massive effort by Obama and his Democrat backers to dismiss the issue, without ever addressing it, makes me suspicious and rouses my ire.

It probably won’t come to anything. This just isn’t a favorable political climate. But it should be answered.

[lmzjewel.livejournal.com]

Good luck and stay safe. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

[aadler]

Always appreciated.