Military Bashing

Last night while ranting I offended my father, a retired Colonel and Air Force fighter pilot. I was mentioning the $30 million F-15 now laying in a field in Libya. Things got heated, and dad declared "if you bash the military you won't get a lot of sympathy in this house!"

For the record, I have nothing but respect for the United States military. Other than the army of Genghis Khan, I can think of no other fighting force as formidable in human history.

It is how that fighting force is deployed that makes me rant. More than partially, this is because of my father's military service. During my formative years, I watched my father be deployed (as a reservist) to Aviano, Italy, to support Clinton's war in Bosnia. The realization that my father could be shot down in some Eastern Bloc nation not especially interested in his presence was sobering. But even more sobering was the idea that my mother could lose her husband. That feeling has strengthened in me as I have grown up and now have a wife and child of my own. The pain of a spouse losing their loved one is almost incalcuble. And yet here we go, deploying Americans into (well, just "over" at this point) yet another country where we arguably don't belong.

It is against brash deployment of the military, not the military itself that I rant. My dad said once "in a perfect world we don't need the military, but we still have it just in case." I think he's right.


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