JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

The recent arrest of Cindy Sheehan has led many to question the real motivation behind her activities. As simplistic as it may be, this is how I see the situation:

We are in Iraq. (Were we deceived as to the reason for going in the first place? Only time will give a full account of those details.) Through voting, Iraqis had the choice of whether or not they wanted to continue on this path. (And I don’t see anything stopping a call for an emergency vote to voice a change if that is what they desire.) This is a time of the internet and access to a wide array of information on almost any topic one wishes to research. America has been at war since 2001. The armed forces fight those wars. This is a time of an all volunteer armed forces. A young man believed enough in his country’s ideologies to think it was worth serving his country. War means loss of human life; his was one of those lives. A grieving mother is exercising one of the rights her son died for, freedom of speech. The mother has begun to take the right to excess leading to civil disobedience. (I don’t think that is something her son forfeited his life for.)

I have lost two mothers in my lifetime, one to alcohol abuse the other to cancer. I have never lost a child and cannot even begin to imagine the anguish that results from such a tragedy. It must be excruciating to lose a family member to a cause that is not fully defined. However, the choice of whether or not a person wants to put their life on the line, for whatever reason, lies not with the family members but with the individual involved. Ultimately, the manner in which this individual member of the armed forces casts their vote lies in whether that person reenlists or separates from the service. Whether or not we personally agree, we should respect the vote of the persons who are serving in the name of our country.