I don't even know what to call this...

A good friend of ours is deploying for Afghanistan today. He had taken a permanent job as an active duty reservists in a non-deployable position, yet he is deploying for 6 months. Yet another example of the military screwing it's people and not playing by its own rules.

I have no idea what to say to this friend - we'll call him Steve - or his wife. He has kids, and is a big family man. He took his current job as a way to protect them from the misery of deployment, yet here he is, shipping out just in time for the holidays.

In other news, my spouse received not one, but two letters from the air force reserves congratulating him on his recent promotion to captain. These letters applauded him for his hard work, and urged to contact the nearest air force reserve office for assignment in order to further his military career.

And all I can think of at this point is "oh crap". These letters, while not a specific threat, are a reminder that 'we still own you'. Theres nothing like that not so subtle reminder to thoroughly mess up your month.

I wonder when our lives will truly be our own. But what I do know is that I can't possibly have kids until my spouse is longer on that leash. So the holding pattern continues.

Call my cynical or crazy, but we got sucked into the military about 9 months before we declared war on Iraq (previously my spouse had been classified as on a medical waiver... and then suddenly, no, he was fit to serve). So it will be interesting to see what happens with Iran & Turkey... in, oh, I dunno, 6-9 months from now.

For the love of god, yell as loud as you can so we don't find ourselves STARTING WWIII in the middle east. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, China & Russia... do you guys see a pattern yet? What we are now hearing about Iran is the same damn thing, almost verbatim, that we heard about Iraq leading up to the war. We are headed down an even darker road than the one we're already on.

Here's another parallel. Right before the Iraq war started, we were in a recession, or headed for one. The economy was tanking. Here we are again. It's fall again. The economy is again tanking. The one thing I learned in High School history is that since the 20th century, the American way out of depression and economic hardship is to start a war to ramp up our defense contractors & manufacturing production. Iraq worked for a little while, but we're tanking again. Solution? Another war!

I'm sure you've noticed yet another cold war-esque type situation brewing - who has nukes, who wants nukes, Russia doesn't want us to put missile defense sites near it, etc. etc.... Think of how BIG the defense industry became because of the cold war. I believe we're looking at beginning of V 2.0

and why? why? energy. I betcha. Oil. Who has the oil, who uses the most oil. As oil becomes scarcer, the fighting for it will get stronger.

And I thought the people who were saying that the Iraq war was a war for oil were quacks. surprise!