Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Problems I see when I look at the world

An unbalance budget bothers me because I know what happens when you spend more then you make, we're a country at war acting like we're not. Tax cuts while we're increasing our spending just doesn't seem logical. Even with the tax cuts and the deficit going up, most of the economy is still going down the tubes. The rent has doubled in the area where I'm living at for no reason what so ever in the last 4 years. What happened? What have we lost?

Another thing I'm seeing is a great deal of outsourcing to other countries. Moving jobs away from the US to some foreign nation. Who has called support for some electronic item and someone in India answers the phone? Considering how bad our jobless rate is getting, shouldn't something be done about that?

Afghanistan was a job that we needed to finish before we shifted our attention to somewhere else. Unlike some people, I think we are doing good things there but it's hard when you only have a skeleton crew working to finish it. The reason it's not in the news daily is because there are no telephone lines, no power grid. If you get to the center of the country, it's like traveling back in time 200 years. Who but a reporter from National Geographic wants to write about that?

There is nothing nice or pretty about being at war. As American fighting men our job is to do whatever our leaders say to do. We're just pawns in the battlefield earning our pay. We don't make policy, we just enforce policy that someone else makes up to the best of our ability. The trick we have to do is live up to the image of the white knight in shining armor. Possible, not likely. We're human and out of any group of people there are bad apples. Folk that don't want to be there, disgruntled by everything, having their life placed in harms way, having to deal with people that want to kill them on a daily basis, doing a job that they're not trained for, for an overtly long period of time. Under that sort of pressure, it's just a matter of time before those flaws rise up to the surface and show themselves. And they are dealt with harshly if you watch the news. With half of troops out here carrying around a digital camera, it's hard to keep such things secret. Personally I like the idea transparency in the military, we can't afford to hide such skeletons in our closet. Truth is always the best answer. Yet on the other side of the coin, there are hero's that put their lives on the line daily to save others. Gems that rise above the bloodshed and shine more then ever could have been possible in a normal mundane life. It all balances out in the end. As usual the bad rises and stays in the media eye longer then the good. Good or bad we signed on the dotted line knowing anything was possible.

The divide I'm seeing between conservatives and liberals also scares me, we're becoming a polarized nation. There has to be a middle ground, these aren't black and white issues, just different shades of gray and whatever anyone is preaching, there are no right answers. All we can do is try.

Milblogs update

Check out Ginmar, A View from a Broad, I like the way this girl thinks.

Also Combat Doc and The Questing Cat these people are at the front line and well worth a read.

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