For a complete change of pace from my usual, I found this post from Tom Ricks’s Best Defense blog to be very interesting. It’s a guest post, introduced as follows:
Tom R.: Today I am offering a guest column by a young vet I know who was one of the most observant Marines I witnessed in Iraq, where he served four tours. He is still sorting through his experiences there, and his thoughts about coming back home.
Here’s a bit of an introduction from near the beginning of that guest post:
… For those who cannot listen to an argument without attacking someone’s personality or politics, here is my background up front. I am a white male. I’m a middle class kid who grew up working on my grandfather’s potato farm in Southern Idaho and lived in suburbia while attending badly run and academically useless public schools K-12. I’m a Generation Y, ivy-league educated, FDR liberal, environmentalist, atheist vegan. I graduated with a BA in English and History in 2002 from a private college I busted my ass to get into on an academic scholarship. I enlisted as a private in United States Marine Corps after 9/11 but I wanted to be a jarhead before that for these reasons: [and you'll have to read his post to find out why ...]
The piece is long, but I found it to be well worth the time. [ link ]
-Julie
