Like you, I volunteered to join the military, in my case, at age eighteen, seven days after my high school graduation. My job in the ASA was to locate enemy radio operators with a WWII era box & antenna called a PRD-1. We mounted it on a jeep and set up next to villages or off the road; sometimes, we put the PRD-1 on top of an armored personnel carrier and crashed through the woods finding high ground, and a few times we were dropped on mountaintops with a squad of grunts to protect our rear-echelon butts. We had three such teams and triangulated our bearings on a map.
Sometimes we located a unit by tracking its roving radio operator over time. A lot of times, of course, our intelligence was faulty. One, the large mountains played hell with radio signals, and, two, there was always operator error. The fact is, we were kids and we really didn't know what the f*ck we were doing. We did the best we could. But, as you know, that's how war works.
All the screw-ups tend to be forgotten, or, if they're really serious and involve lives, classified.
There I was, a kid just out of high school, being flown around on choppers with no doors over amazing expanses of jungle. I'll never forget the sensually winding Se San River that looked in the dawn sunlight magically like a shimmering golden snake. I was in awe. But, the truth be known, I didn't have a clue what I was doing there or why Vietnamese kids just like me were trying to kill me, and me them.
The technology has changed, but we're still fed so much bullshit as we grow up. We each so want to fit in and to be a man, and all that crap. But for some of us, after following all the rules and staying within the lines, one day it dawns on us: what we're involved in doesn't make any sense. We're smack in the middle of it, we're smart and we realize we're part of something based on lies told to cover up other lies and screw-ups and embarrassments all to keep the war going.
It's so big, if you question it, you don't stand a chance.
In my case, that realization came after I was out of the service and home, where I was safe. In your case, it seems to have come while you were in the midst of all the madness -- where you are not safe. In fact, you are in grave peril and at the mercy of a vast military and political machine much more sophisticated, secret and insidious in its practices than the military I served in 40 years ago.
I've been a member of Veterans For Peace for 25 years. Many members like me are in full support of you, and we will be discussing your case at our August convention. We need to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds your case and, equally, the secrecy that keeps images and information on how we fight our wars from the American people who pay for them and in whose name they are fought.
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