I dunno. I wasn't drafted back in the day. I saw friends die. I saw homeless vets begging in the street. When Top Gun was released, I knew Hollywood was on a "war is glamorous" campaign, and the days of fearing Vietnam were over. Plus, there was a whole generation who didn't see the aftermath. But how could their parents, who did see the Vietnam "conflict" aftermath, let their kids risk it?

I'm not judging. I just don't understand.

I was born in 1980 to republican leaning parents. I grew up hearing about Vietnam, but not really knowing anything about it. None of my immediate family served in that war and anyone I had direct contact with who was in that war served in a rear echelon function (i.e. not in direct combat). My one grandfather was an Infantryman in WWII and my other grandfather was a typist stationed in Japan during Korea. My grandfather that served in Korea talked about his military time a lot. My WWII Infantryman grandfather never mentioned what he did or what the war was about.

During my formative years our country was involved in a number of various military excursions, but the number of American casualties was light and the media covered them in a manner that showed them all as being positive and ethical. The type of war that we fought in Vietnam (which I never really knew anything about) didn't exist to Americans anymore.

War was fun and glorious and it obviously never hurt anyone who wasn't a combatant or who didn't deserve to be hurt - or at least that is what the media taught me. Do you remember the gulf war trading cards published by Tops during the first gulf war in 1991? What about all of the popular movies depicting the heroics of manly men in combat? None of the popular culture movies focused on the horrors of modern war and how if impacts those who are involved. The few movies that I can think of that did were drowned out by the movies that glorify it and I was unequipped to understand the themes. As a 10 or 12 year old do you really have any means to understand that the movie "The Dear Hunter" was about or even understand "Apocalypse Now". To me, those movies were filled with scenes of awesomeness, not pain and suffering.

Don't forget the term "surgical strike".

When in 1997 I joined the Army I did so after seeing what we were doing in Bosnia and Kosovo. I believed that the US learned its lessons of frivolous wars like Vietnam and that it would never again wage wars like that. The US Army was a tool used to stop pain and suffering and to extend privilege to the oppressed.

In 1998 I received an Army ROTC scholarship and I graduated in 2002 with a degree in chemistry. I had a 4 year commitment to the Army and I volunteered to be an Infantry Officer. Afghanistan, in my mind was justified and was the only war that was going on. Iraq was still nearly a year away from kicking off. I spent the next year of my life training and going to various military schools at Fort Benning, GA. I went to my Infantry Officer Basic Course, Airborne School, Ranger School, and I was nearing completion of my Mechanized Infantry Leaders Course when the war in Iraq broke out. When the war happened in Iraq, I never understood or supported it.

I arrived to the unit that I would eventually deploy to Iraq with in June 2003. I deployed to Iraq in February 2004 and functioned as an Infantry Platoon Leader there until I left in March 2005. Even in the military, we had no idea what we were getting ready to experience in Iraq. Maybe the upper level guys did, but my peers didn't have any clue that Iraq was going to be as intense as it was or that actual combat was going to be as much of a life changing event for me as it turned out to be.

So why did I join the military? Probably mostly out of a combination of false ideals (i.e. war is glorious, patriotic, and nobody who isn't a "combatant" gets hurt) and a lack of understanding for how traumatic was can be on people.