Boots on the Ground

September 11, 2001- I awake from my slumber in the barracks of Camp San Mateo, Camp Pendleton California. My bunkmate is shaking me and telling me I have to see this. I groggily get out of bed and apprehensively follow him. My bunkmate is prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, so I’m skeptical that I actually have to see anything he finds as “has to see”. I make my way to a room where one of the few Marines in the barracks has a television and cable. I look at the screen and realize how wrong I was to question my bunkmate’s motivation to wake me up… I get dressed and make my way to the shop where I work and upon arrival there is a buzz I can feel with all 5 senses. Someone has brought a television from home and we all gather around to watch the news. I scan the room and gauge the mixed reactions from my fellow Marines; some are in shock and awe, some are inexplicably pissed off, and some are like myself. I feel an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

July 2002- We have just returned from deployment in Japan, and suddenly we are doing work-ups: exceptional and constant amounts of physical fitness (exceptional even by Marine Corps standards). We start doing a lot of gas mask training: multiple trips to the gas chamber, hiking in gas masks, gas mask drills etc. It is not as if we’ve forgotten about 9/11 but we put it on the back burner to focus on our recent deployment. My world is so small that I am oblivious to what is going on in the news. The writing is on the wall, as they say, yet I fail to recognize it. War is inevitable. Or perhaps I do see the writing on the wall, but I subconsciously don’t want to believe that that’s exactly where we are headed. Even when we touch down in Kuwait I am still uncertain that we will actually be doing any fighting.

As a Marine you are trained not to question orders, so when you are told that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and he needs to be taken out of power, you accept it without discrimination. You believe it to be true regardless if it is so. There is no room for intellectual examination on the merits of what you are told; it simply is what it is. When you are cleaning your weapon, checking your sites, and loading your magazines preparing for combat it’s futile as well as detrimental to contemplate the reason why you are doing these things. As I look back now it is almost laughable to believe the assertion that we went into Iraq based on the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However, since WWII what legitimate premise has the U.S. had for engaging in a war? Let’s rewind back to the Vietnam War. Leaving aside the U.S. underlying interests in Vietnam, official U.S. involvement began in January of 1962 when materials, U.S. military advisors, and helicopter pilots began arriving. In 1962, by request of President Johnson, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed by U.S. congress which authorized military action in Southeast Asia more or less setting the stage for what was to come. Air raids then began in 1965 and by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. military “boots on the ground”. U.S. involvement would not end until 1975

Fast forward to present day. This past Friday Pentagon officials announced that military advisors (1,500 American troops) would be deployed to Iraq. If the Vietnam War taught us anything, is that military advisors are a pre-cursor to something much more involved then what that term should mean at face value. Another fact that should be noted is three days prior to the Pentagon’s announcement the mid-term elections took place where Republicans took control of the Senate. I am fairly sure it is well known that conservatism is synonymous with the deployment of American troops to foreign countries; however vague...or questionable the reasoning. It has been suggested by Jennifer Griffin and affiliates from Fox News, that Obama strategically waited to announce the addition of 1,500 troops to Iraq in order to place responsibility on the Republican Party and/or his successor. A statement which Rear Admiral John Kirby, Press Secretary, refutes based on the need of Iraq’s recent willingness to combat ISIS. Even if you believe the premise that Obama intentionally waited to make this move is not even the most troubling issue involved in this scenario.

Whether you believe in U.S. isolationism, or you believe the U.S. should intervene whenever a child’s nose bleeds in a country that the majority of us can’t even pronounce is irrelevant. As a nation we should be keener on recognizing deception, which ultimately is truth masked by fabrication, and understand the objective reality of military intervention. When we are told Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, or when we send military advisors (boots on the ground) to Southeast Asia we should understand why, as opposed to accepting why. As a soldier I was not granted the opportunity to decipher between understanding why, I simply had to accept why and do my job. Now when I hear the term “boots on the ground” it takes on a whole new meaning. In Chuck Klosterman’s book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs he writes:

…. all their political insights are unabashed propaganda, even when they happen to be right: They sometimes tell the truth, but they’re always subtracting facts. That’s what they get paid to do. They are paid to manipulate and simplify issues that are too complex for casual observers to understand independently…

It doesn’t matter whether it is America’s duty to stop ISIS (which some argue is a result of Obama pulling out the troops in 2011). Ultimately what we should be concerned with as a nation is, when whoever tells you we should send military advisors someplace we can ask why, before you’re waving goodbye to your brother, sister, mother, boyfriend, cousin, nephew.

Pieces and Creases