Today I received a post from a man who was my best friend from
second grade through high school about how one of his army buddies
had died in Afghanistan . I guess he and I have grown apart this
last year but it makes me sad to hear another life has been lost
for the wealth of the 1% and now my friend is in mourning. What’s
worse is that this friend may be deploying soon and I’m watching
the news and hearing about how the soldiers’ rate of suicide has
surpassed the rate of deaths in combat.

I have to wonder what’s about to happen to all my friends
who joined or are now joining the military. Am I about to
start seeing them come home with PTSD and start committing
suicide? I feel like I can’t even talk to them anymore. I
know I can’t make them understand they have too much faith
in the military.  They would believe I’ve been brainwashed by
the left-wing alternative press as surely as I believe they’ve
been lied to and manipulated by military recruiters.

How could they not have fallen for it living in a navy town
where so many of the kids in our high school were navy
brats. We’d see them right outside the cafeteria where the
recruiters would have their table with toys, key chains and
literature set up outside the lunchroom at least once a week
if not a few times a week.  They’d talk about college funds,
they’d talk about what a great career path it was and then
the uniformed recruiters would start showing off and getting
into push-up contests with the students and they would be so
friendly and so respected. No one ever questioned them.

I guess I was different. At an early age I came to the
conclusion that war was bad, that at
the best of times war was a necessary evil. When I got to
high school and I started reading “Democracy Now” headlines I
realized these were not the best of times and joining the
military was not a good way for our generation to fight for
freedom – but I couldn’t convince anyone else of this. They
all just thought I was listening to too much Anti-Flag.

Now a lot of them are soldiers and a lot of them are going
to deploy.  Some have deployed already. I wonder what is going
to become of my old classmates. What is going to become of
my childhood friends, my friends who think they’re fighting
for freedom but as far as I can tell they’re just fighting
for the interests of the 1%?