Happy Memorial Day '10!

I am currently training to join the US Army and am going to enlist soon, so before I do, I felt compelled to write a blog in salute for our troops.

While I am not a fan of war unless it is in self defense, I still have nothing but respect for our soldiers. Even in self defense though, war sucks. It is just a fact of life. No matter what people die, people get hurt, and families get ruined. The fact that our men and women are willing to risk their lives to protect us have my upmost respect.

Politically, I do have a lot of issues with our foreign policy. Currently, we are fighting three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Korea. Let me explain Korea first since that one may not seem obvious. Contrary to popular belief the Korean War never really ended. What happened was that a ceasefire was made so that the North and South Koreans cannot cross the 38th parallel. We still have a reasonable presence in South Korea.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a result of the Taliban offering amnesty to Osama bin Laden. Allowing the leader of the terrorist group responsible for the greatest terrorist attack on our country was not the smartest move of the Taliban. The problem with Afghanistan is that we started another conflict before we could finish the fight and we diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq.

The Iraq conflict is definitely the most controversial decision of the Bush administration. At first it did seem like a lost cause, but fortunately with the brilliant decisions by General Petraeus and the 'surge' strategy, the end to the Iraq War does seem imminent. General Petraeus has certainly earned himself a spot in my list of people who I aspire to be like (probably the main reason why I want to be in the Army). But anyway, my understanding for the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was that the Bush administration bought into the neoconservative philosophy of preemptive war and that Iraq was believed to be an imminent threat. This foreign policy became very attractive after 9/11. The justification for believing Iraq was an imminent threat was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. While it turned out that there weren't any, to the administration's defense other intelligence agencies besides the CIA claimed they did. Even still people forget about this, but that is not the point. If you are going to exercise preemptive war, you can't have any errors. The lack of weapons of mass destruction is kind of a big one.

Well I hope these active conflicts end soon, and again, thanks to all of the men and women out there who are serving or have served in our armed forces. I salute you.