[Promoted to front page by Rick]

I have also done a lot of thinking about this issue, and this is what I have come to: It is no service to soldiers to lump them together and write them off as "puppets".

True, they are not the orchestrators of this war. But they are the machinery that makes it happen. As we all know, this comes with heavy consequences to themselves, their loved ones, and people in Iraq. Our government happens to be extremely skilled at convincing people in the military that they have no choices anymore, they are nothing more than government property, and that their duty to obey orders is somehow a higher calling than their own inherent human moral sensibility.

Then our government convinces us civilians that our duty to be polite to soldiers is more important than our duty to tell the truth and hold one another accountable.

Bullshit.

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You do not lose your identity, your humanity, or your responsibility when you put on a uniform. We are each responsible for every decision we make and its impacts.

We make mistakes. We f*** up.That is the nature of being human. And we get into seemingly hopeless situations where we think there's no way out, and its hard to do the right thing. But no matter how deep we get in, it is our responsibility to follow truth and justice through the messes we have created or fallen into.

I work with people in prison who's situations are horrible. I have met people who were wrongly convicted. I have met people who were sentenced for stealing food for their kids. I have met people who have been using, dealing, and manufacturing drugs since before adolescence and will leave prison to no job opportunities, no money, no support network, and having lost custody of their children. Why the hell do people keep on trying to do good?

I don't know. But I know that many people do. And the really good people that I have met in life are the people that are willing to take responsibility for their own power, no matter how minute it might be. They take their power and choose what they will use it for. That's all we can do.

Its incredible to see someone who you thought was powerless do this, because what you find out is that all of us- no matter how oppressed and marginalized- have an incredible amount of power that touches everything and everyone all around us. Very few of us know how to use it.

The government would have the people in our military believe that they have no power, no freedom, no value except as a duty-bound cog in the war-machine.

Because if the soldiers knew the truth, this war would vaporize in a heartbeat. And so would the profits that the powerful are reaping from it. It takes a tremendous amount of propaganda to keep people from seeing the obvious. The emperor has no clothes. There is no war without soldier's consent.

I will not do the "troops" the disrespect of calling them mindless government property. They have hearts and minds and pumping blood and breath and conscience under those uniforms, and they are duty-bound, as are we all, to use them to do whatever's right, even when it means being scandalized or imprisoned.

I hate that this is what will happen to them. But I still support them in doing it. I don't think it is right for me to avoid confronting wrong-doing because it is painful for the person doing it. I would call on all soldiers to resist this war.

Jade