The latest from "My War."
Vote? As If!
By CBFTW
A couple days ago my Squad Ldr wanted a list of names of everybody who wanted to vote via-absentee ballot. He said raise your hand if you want to vote. Nobody raised their hands. No, I take that back, one person did, but then realized nobody else raised theirs, and so he put his hand back down. The Army is professionals at fixing problems. That's what the Army does best, fix problems, big and small. Problem: Low absentee voter turn out. Solution: Company mass formation 08:00am, bring your ID cards and a pen.
So at 08 this morning we had a formation and an Army Captain came out and said, "Men, nobody's forcing you to vote, BUT..." and he said a bunch of stuff like, its UnAmerican not to vote yadda yadda, basically gave a brief little speech to get us motivated to vote. It worked. I said fuck it, I'll register to vote. He had a bunch of tables set up, divided by states, and each table had a form you fill out to register to vote. I went to the California table and filled out the paperwork, which took 30 seconds. I was a little confused when they asked for party affiliation, so I put down Independent, even though that's become a really trendy thing to do nowadays.
I seriously wasn't planning on voting in this election, neither candidate excite me. I've voted in every election since I was 18, but I was planning on taking a break from this one, because I don't really feel like voting for the lesser of the two evils. The first election I voted in I was still in High School, and my father (who's a lot like the dad on that TV show the Wonder Years with Winnie Cooper) forced me to register and vote. He said, "Look you live in my house, you don't pay rent, you and all your deadbeat skateboarding buddies eat all the food my house, the least you could do for me is vote!" So I did, on Election Day, he woke my ass up and dragged me to the balloting place, which was some ladies house down the street. On the way there I asked, "Hey dad, how do you vote?" His answer, "Oh, voting is easy! All you do is vote for every single person that has the words: "Republican" next to it." I said, "But dad, what if the democrat is better than the republican?" His answer, "Impossible, there's no such thing as Democrat that's better than a republican, you figure the worst Republican is still ten times better than the best Liberal."
That was my first lesson in voting. Needless to say I'm a little bit, actually way more moderate than my father, but he taught me lesson, when its time to vote, you get off your ass and you vote.
I can't say anything negative about my Commander In Chief, so I wont. But I also can't vote for a person who threw his medals at the White House. You just don't do something like that. Like, if I did something like that, to protest this war, that would be a total slap in the face to all my brothers in my Platoon, all the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the people who lost their lives here, all the POW's, all the Vets, all the guys in all the other branches, and all my Drill Sgt's at Benning, and I wouldn't do something like that to them. It's hard enough as it is. Disagree with me all you want on this, but that's just how I feel.
The soldiers I know in the Army who are voting for Kerry in this election (which is a lot more than people would think) are voting for him because they're pissed off at Bush. They're pissed off because of Stop Loss, tour extensions, underestimating the amount of troops needed for Iraq, the Weapons of Mass destruction thing, the legitimacy of coming to Iraq, and they feel Kerry might also get us out of here faster. Stuff like that.
The soldiers I know who are voting for Bush are voting for him because they support him 110% on his Global War On Terrorism, and there is no shadow of a doubt that we did the right thing coming to Iraq. They feel Bush is doing a great job so far out here. A lot of the guys remember what happened to the military the last time a Democrat was in office. The guys I know who served in the military during the Clinton years, tell me all sorts of horror stories about the budget cuts. How they couldn't get any good training done, because they had no money for ammunition or anything. In training, if they ran out of bullets to fire, they would yell "Bang! Bang! Bang!" or yell "Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts!" to simulate shots being fired. Since Bush has been in office, we've never had those kinds of problems and there has been nothing but improvements in the military, we've had a couple small pay raises, and the quality of life has gone extremely up for people in the military.
And then there's people like me, who just might vote for Ralph Nader, just because he's the F-U vote.
Quote Of The Day: "Vote?! Our job is to protect Democracy, not be a part of it!" |
