Reading your articles these past months have done wonders for my mental health. I thought to myself, “here is a guy who gets it.” A real liberal, not some obnoxious kid yelling about legalizing marijuana and overthrowing the government while living in his parents’ basement. After reading your last article, however, I can only describe my feelings as disappointment. I am a liberal democrat. But I am also a cadet in Air Force ROTC.
In roughly 18 months, I will receive my commission and go on active duty. My father was in the Air Force, my grandfather served in the Army. I have had a member of my family serve in the military going back all the way to the American Civil War. Are we murderers, as you implied in your article? Lord only knows that I do not agree with every military decision that the past two presidents have made, and I will certainly not deny that there have been cases of soldiers, sailors and airmen committing atrocities up to and including murder on the battlefield. But implying that soldiers are murderers because of a few bad eggs is like saying because there are doctors who perform abortions perform abortions at points when the fetus could be birthed and survive independently means that all abortionists are murders.
I also agree with you in your article that military service is not the only way to serve your country. My brother is a school teacher in Cincinnati public schools and his work is invaluable to this country. But how are the fire fighters who died in the World Trade Center towers any more or less noble than the Special Forces operators who died in the mountains of Tora Bora only months later? Both died in service of their countries, probably scared out their minds, in situations they probably did not fully understand.
The idea of world peace, and working together to achieve it, is a noble goal. But it is completely unrealistic in this day and age. Until the day that swords are beaten into plowshares, the United States will need a military and thus need ROTC. So why can’t AU have both peacemakers and war fighters? If anything having an ROTC program at AU would only help liberalize the military. Given our student body, it is not unreasonable to assume that the majority of cadets in an AU ROTC program would be liberal. This would mean every year we would be sending liberal officers into the military. Robert Gates and Mike Mullen make up the most liberal defense secretary and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman combo the U.S. has probably have had. On top of that, our president is Barack Obama. Imagine what could be accomplished if there was a sizeable stock of junior and mid-level officers behind them.
The mission of the United States military is to aggressively wage war against an opponent when called upon. But this does not mean that the U.S. military has never done anything for the betterment of mankind. Chief Master Sergeant Tony Travis of my beloved Air Force was named as one of Time Magazines Top 100 influential people in 2010, because 12 hours after the earthquake in Haiti he and his team were in a helicopter on their way there. 28 minutes after touchdown, they had set up the largest single runway operation in history, bringing food and supplies to the people of Haiti. The USNS Hope is essentially a floating hospital without a single weapon on board. It just returned from South America, making stops at major ports and giving away free medical treatment. These two examples are just a few out of literally hundreds examples where the military stepped in for no tactical or strategic gain, but simply to help.
I do not ask you to rethink your status on U.S. foreign policy, or what you think you know about military service. But I do ask you to be more opinion minded about it, about us. Be more liberal, if you will.
Cadet Evan M. Wieczorek Air Force ROTC Detachment 130 SIS, ‘12
