Opposing the war and supporting "our" troops at the same time may seem a nice easy middle-of-the-road position, but like many such it may be found on close examination to contain irreconcilable contradictions.  (I put "our" in quotation marks because their commander in chief was not elected and the government that they more generally serve does not represent the American people.)

My own attitude towards the young people in US uniforms today is rather like what I feel towards todays' crop of recruits into the Crips, the Bloods, or the Mafia.  I do wish them well as fellow citizens and fellow human beings, but both for their own sake and that of their potential victims I heartily regret and wish undone their choice to join an organization dedicated to violence.

Lass brings up the thoroughly relevant matter of people's reasons for enlisting, but then she is curiously reticent about it.  She writes, "Many go into the military for many different reasons. . . . He joined the Marines for a couple of reasons"--but she then offers no specifics or further explanation in either case.  

Wanting to serve the cause of freedom even at the cost of one's own life is a noble motive, certainly.  So perhaps is wanting to serve the cause of Allah (the merciful, the compassionate) even at the cost of one's own life, like John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban."  To combine the well-known sayings of General Sherman and Dr. Johnson, the road to war is paved with good intentions.  But when it comes to being prepared not merely to die but also to kill for a cause, surely there is some moral necessity at least to make sure of the righteousness of the cause first.  (Gandhi suggested however that while many causes might be worth dying for, none was worth killing for.)

Yes, Lass, people who enlist in the U.S. armed forces ought to be aware that "there is always that chance they will go to war."  They ought also to be aware that there is no guarantee or even much likelihood that if war comes, the cause that they will be fighting for will be freedom, in any meaningful sense of the word.  And they themselves are thus likely to wind up killing innocent people in an unconscionable cause, and going to meet their maker either then or later with the mark of Cain upon their souls.

But like their colleagues the tobacco merchants, the merchants of death in our military recruitment offices shrewdly target those who are too young to have figured this out or to be governed by reason at all.  That they will be ignorant of history is also a good safe bet.

There is a saying, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."  (Yes, yes, I know there's a Bushspeak version of it too.)  If today's US warriors were old enough to remember the Tonkin Gulf hoax, or the infamous baby-incubator hoax of Gulf War I, I'd say shame on them for signing up now.  As it is, I say shame on my own generation for not wising them up.