Why our troops really serve

In reading the latest articles concerning our troops and the war in Iraq, I wonder how many people know what the troops are actually doing overseas? Yes, Jack Killen’s column ruffled a few feathers, and as the wife of a soldier, I do admit that I was angered as well, but more obvious than his strong opinion is how obvious it was that his opinion was not based on fact.

Before arguing about why soldiers enter the military in the first place, one must understand that the military does much more than fight a war in Iraq. There are soldiers in nearly every country doing humanitarian work, maintaining military bases or helping to rebuild our nation after disasters at home.

When one states that soldiers have a choice in whether they go to Iraq, one must also understand what that soldier is choosing between.

Once activated, they decide: serve your country or go AWOL and go to jail. Recent court cases have also proved that even if a soldier goes AWOL, the judge can order that soldier overseas anyway and put them on the front lines in the infantry instead of the job they were initially trained and called to duty for.

I believe the main issue is the lack of public knowledge of what our troops are actually doing in Iraq right now. The troops’ main job in Iraq is to ‘go door to door’ from village to village helping the Iraqi people with setting up and implementing a local government.

This is important because in the villages that we have yet to reach, the extremist groups like Al Qaida are convincing the local people that the United States is evil, and the local people in turn provide a safe haven for the terrorists.

Our main goal there is not to ‘go kill some Arabs,’  but to make it so the terrorist groups cannot run a dictatorship, cannot find a safe haven and cannot control elections in the new Iraqi government.

I choose to believe that our troops are fundamentally good people who are deserving of our support and respect.

Kelly Roudabush
IU doctoral candidate