A few weeks ago, I was debating with my mother on returning back to college. She believes it's pointless and would cause more debt to follow me. Considering the fact I spend the majority of my time in a small apartment looking after my dad, I need someplace to go to lead me in some kind of direction. School may not be the best choice, but it is my choice.
That was the puzzling issue people seemed to have with Lt. Ehren Watada, an Army Soldier from Honolulu who refused to go to Iraq when his unit deploys later on in the month.
Obviously there were lots of people searching for a real reason for his action. The WizBangBlog attempts to degrade his position as being nothing more than a toy for the left-wing. If he is, so the hell what?
Lt. Watada volunteered to be in the Army - that same right to choose should be given to him to leave it. People in the civil rights movement chose to fight, despite the fact that their lives would be in danger. If nothing else was to be gained from it, it's a lesson to people - if you believe in an issue, stand for it. Lt. Watada at that point showed that he more legs to stand on in his own soul than most of us do in our daily lives.
We spoke of how this damages the morale of the soldiers and of our president. The trouble was we damaged the morale of our troops by allowing the slaughter of innocent people in order to catch Bin Laden, a man who we haven't been able to catch since this thing began. If we are the baddest country in the world, we should be that using the top head - not the clunky one in our pants.
Regardless of the outcome for Lt. Watada, more will follow in his footsteps - at least I hope. After enough do it, the conservatives will have no choice but to take a good hard look at themselves. When they do unfortunately, it may be already too late for them to repair their own damages.
Posted by Matthew at June 8, 2006 08:06 AM | TrackBack