<p>Emerald, Thanks for the CNN link - I've been looking for solid figures on civilian casualties. Unfortunately, the study in the article is an estimate, that may or may not be accurate or based on reliable information. Even the authors of the study admit it is based on a limited sample. It is really horrible that we are even discussing this, isn't it?</p>
<p>Weenie, I do understand the consequences of the individual ready reserve. My husband is part of it. But, again, even then I do not consider it totally involuntary. They agree to be in the individual ready reserve in exchange for retirement and health benefits in the future. They had the option of leaving the military at the end of their initial enlistment without being in the ready reserve but chose to stay in.</p>
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Two: If you think eveyone is there voluntarily now, then perhaps you haven't heard of the Individual Ready Reserve. This has affected a member of my family, with very negative consequences. You really should educate yourself on it.
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</p>
<p>The only thing that you have shown me is that you REALLY DON'T KNOW what the Individual Ready Reserve really is.</p>
<p>Emerald and all -- Here is a site of interest on the civilian deaths - it is an independent organization that counts actual deaths based on credible and confirmed sources:
<a href="http://iraqbodycount.net/%5B/url%5D">http://iraqbodycount.net/</a> The organization is out of england. Still, way too high.</p>
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uc_benz, you failed to answer the main question which is: are YOU willing to fight in Iraq? if not, WHY NOT? whether you are in favor of the war in Iraq or not is irrelevant.
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<p>That's a loaded question that I'm certainly not going to speculate on right now. I cannot predict what will happen in the future, nor will I attempt to do so. As of now, I am not voluntarily joining the military because I believe I have other things to do in life, i.e. go to college.</p>
<p>Weenie. The site below does a good job of explaining the Individual Ready Reserve. They have a contractual obligation to fulfill and surely would have no problem accepting the retirement and other benefits they are due to receive even if they were not called up. They were not forced to sign up for the reserves or the military and they agreed to serve when called whether or not they agreed with the reason they were being called. May not be fair in some people's minds but again, they didn't have to sign up in the first place and I doubt few would turn down those retirement benefits on similar principle.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Weenie. The site below does a good job of explaining the Individual Ready Reserve. They have a contractual obligation to fulfill and surely would have no problem accepting the retirement and other benefits they are due to receive even if they were not called up. They were not forced to sign up for the reserves or the military and they agreed to serve when called whether or not they agreed with the reason they were being called.
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</p>
<p>That is correct. The IRR is simply a part of their service. There is nothing too shady about it.</p>
<p>If you enter the IRR or any contractual sector of the military, do not complain about being called into service. You can complain about the justifications for the war and even the people who choose to launch the war, but complaining about a clause in your contract getting exercised is ridiculous. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't reap the benefits from being in IRR while not accepting the contractual obligations you have. To me that just seems unethical.</p>
<p>Some of you parents seem to have eaten a big bite of Michael Moore's brain and let the poison seep into you. Seriously.</p>
<p>I have two adult kids D has math/teaching from CSU. Also, she is a 2nd Lt USAF working in intel. Loves the applied mathematics. My S, is a member of 2/5 USMC.
He has been to Iraq twice. He was part of the build-up around Fallujah April/May 2004.</p>
<p>I see your politics as very ugly for the purpose of this site!</p>
<p>Please honor those that protect your freedoms!</p>
<p>I think many of you may perhaps be missing the actual point of the OP. The question is not so much that if you agree with the war, you should be packing your bags to go. I think when people pose questions like this, what they are sometimes (I can't speak for OP, just speculating) really saying is, if you had "skin in the game" would you feel the same way. Another way of saying it is the famous quote "where you sit is where you stand". </p>
<p>There used to be a lot of exercises in business school in which students created fictitious portfolios using real stocks. They would "trade" the stocks, on paper only, for several months, with the supposed goal being to see who earned or lost the most on paper at the end of the semester. Then lo and behold, somebody finally did a study that proved people with paper stocks made radically different trading decisions than if the gains - and losses - were real. The same person followed radically different trading patterns when they had real skin in the game.</p>
<p>This is just like the OP's question. In other words, the issue is not these side issues of whether an 18 year old makes up their own minds, or whether you're going to go to Iraq yourself, etc. The real question is, do you REALLY support the war. If you look across the kitchen table in the morning at the person you love the most, and that person is at risk of dying next month on the front lines - if you still feel then that the cost is worth the war, then you do REALLY support the war. But if in your heart of hearts you will admit that you would honestly not be prepared to lose the one person you love the most, then you have to at least admit to qualms about the war. And that's where the rubber meets the road. More so now, especially since it's a volunteer army, we have to be careful to send our kids to wars we truly support. One of the drawbacks of a volunteer army is that it becomes a little too easy to go to war.</p>
<p>Hayden:
I am REALLY REALLY proud of both of my kids! and I support Bush. War, is what happens when there are no other options. One does not volunteer for it, but doesnt run away from it. Both of my kids were adults when they volunteered. Their choice.
I have REAL skin in the game.</p>
<p>We can fight them there or here. The choice was ours! At the very lease, you could honor those that protect your freedom!!!</p>
<p>Lets take this debate somewhere else, please.</p>
<p>RMB - why do you think my post took one side or the other? Obviously you support the war, you live it, and you feel it. There is nothing in my post that would be against that. And what makes you think my post even hinted at not honoring those that protect us? I'm getting a little tired of people accusing anyone who even begins to question the war in Iraq as not honoring the soldiers. As a woman, I am the only one in my family who has not served - my dad fought in WWII and Korea both, my mother was a sargeant in the army during WWII, and my brother just retired as sargeant major. </p>
<p>Why is it that so many people who suggest that people think about war, are seen as being against war?</p>
<p>It's more like would you send your child X to die for the security of the filthy capitalist geopolitical interests of the United States under the banner of "DeMOCKracy." :)</p>
<p>Cherry, your rhetorical question would have some (limited) validity if there was a draft. There isn't. The men and women who volunteer to serve have given the decision great thought and decided to take the risk for reasons such as service to thier country, benefits they receive as soldiers and veterans, belief in the conflict, or perhaps just as a way of continuing a prized family tradition. I would ask you this question: who are you to impose some sort of "fairness test" which says that a certain number of those serving have to be from rich families, or that there should be a cap on the number of poor kids leapfrogging into the middle class via the military? As long as we have an all volunteer military, then that force needs to be used in the nation's defense. Bush asked Congress for permission to attack Iraq. He got it. The 2002 elections ratified this decision with a huge electoral win for the Republicans. The 2004 election ratified the continued used of our forces (including the casualties) in Iraq.</p>
<p>The idea which seems to animate your thought is that only those who voted for Bush or support the war should bear the burdens of the war. This is not the democratic way. The majority decides on a concept, within pre-agreed limitations, decides what should happen and then everyone (including those who opposed the concept strenuously) are responsible for supporting the decision.</p>
<p>Otherwise it would be fine for those who don't like environmental laws to pollute all they wished and for bigots to subject minorities to unfair discrimination. Whether you agree of not, a valid decision for war has been made and your nation is at war in Iraq, including you, not just the Bush supporters.</p>
<p>I find it quite amusing when people say you must have a loved one in the war to actually believe in the war. Since when it is a prerequisite that you have to participate in order to have the "right" to support it. I'm sure all of the people out there who didn't vote on November 2 don't support a democracy and would rather have a dictatorship that makes all of the decisions for them. Or maybe if I support the eradication of AIDS in Africa I should be over there right now. Give me a break. No one wants to see our young people die, but it is a reality of war.</p>
<p>My wife and I have told our son we will leave the country if he wants to avoid the draft and wants us to leave. Fortunately Mexico is close and is not so warmongering. No way we would sacrifice our son for this stupidity. Most of our friends feel the same way.</p>
<p>I work next to the recruting office. It is sad to see the recruiters sucking up to the poor kids who have nothing better to do. The word is getting out. Iraq will go on till the all "volunteer" army quits going or Bush comes to his senses.</p>
<p>I'm willing to bet that only about 1% of the kids on this bbs would ever consider going unless drafted. It is just something for others to do. Sort of like the attitude of Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and the rest of the chickenhawk elitists who didn't go to Vietnam, but were all for it.</p>
<p>"I work next to the recruting office. It is sad to see the recruiters sucking up to the poor kids who have nothing better to do. "</p>
<p>I spent a week working at a recruiting office last summer and these kids that go in are really loyal to serve (the jrotc cadets) or the ones who have a 1.5 grade point average and think this is their way to get free money for college (I know because most of them are from my school) The phone conversations inside are depressing, some would do anything just to get out and away because life is so terrible at home. I hope there is not a draft in any of the services either. I don't want a bunch of whiny brats wearing my uniform.</p>
<p>I've just been skimming this thread cause i can't possibly read every signle post, and I'm getting the impression that the antis are arguing that if you aren't willing to fight you shouldn't support a war. Have any of the liberals actually thought this one out? If we left military and foreign policy decisions up to current or former soldiers and excluded anyone who didn't want to personally enlist, do you think the descisions would get more or less hawkish? As a conservative who doesn't have any immediate plans to enlist in any armed force (I truly think I can better serve the world as a physicist), I'm all for that. Let the warriors make war and leave the politicians out of it. Of course, this would be a liberal nightmare. Why? Because the world's most powerful military force might start fighting and winning battles like the world's most powerful military force.</p>
<p>"As a conservative who doesn't have any immediate plans to enlist in any armed force (I truly think I can better serve the world as a physicist),"</p>
<p>Thanks for proving my point. It is sad that kids like this go to "elite" schools where their elitism is reinforced and they think it is perfectly fine to send those with lesser SAT scores to be cannon fodder.</p>
<p>Rummy. Bush and the gang would be proud of this kid for not having any guilt over the issue.</p>
<p>I think they should start sending the politicians who get us into these things into the battlefield, then perhaps we would see more thoughtful decision making if they had to reap what they sow.</p>
[quote]
Sad to the depths of his 4-year-old soul, Jack Shanaberger knew what he didn't want to be when he grows up: a father.</p>
<p>"I don't want to be a daddy because daddies die," the child solemnly told his mother after his father, Staff Sgt. Wentz "Baron" Shanaberger, a military policeman from Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed March 23 in an ambush in Iraq.
<p>Yes, I'd rather send a professional soldier in the best-equipped army in the world to go fight based on a real conviction rather than express politically motivated false sympathy for his risk. Do you have any children or relatives in the armed services that are at risk right now? Do they think the war is a bad idea? If you answer yes to both of those, you're either lying or a statistical anomaly. Most soldiers are conservatives who come from conservative families. If the soldiers believe in what they're doing, why is it wrong for me to agree?</p>
<p>You have absolutely zero conception of how this war affects other people in other countries. Our soldiers are fighting and dying so that innocent people who can't fight back don't have to die. Mass graves, [url=<a href="http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp%5DHalabja%5B/url">http://www.krg.org/reference/halabja/index.asp]Halabja[/url</a>]? If you thought the American Abu Ghraib was bad, you should look into what it was like under Sadam. We refused to confront Germany in the late 30s because we were afraid of American boys going across the pond to die for French and British boys. We KNEW what the Nazis were doing to the Jews but couldn't care less. Why, because American lives were at stake. </p>
<p>Why don't you get a real argument beside that American lives are at stake.</p>