My AnySoldier.com experience

[Neecy]

Last December, my sister and I decided to send a holiday package to a random soldier using AnySoldier.com. We looked through some listings and eliminated any obvious freeps or those deluded into bragging about being 'liberators'. Most of them seemed like nice kids and they didn't want much.

We picked out a nice young woman from Nebraska who wanted Christmas candy for her unit. She didn't seem like a blood 'n guts type and seemed normal. We loaded up a big box with candy, snacks, books and such and mailed it off. She'd asked for email addresses in her listing so she could thank people so we signed a card with our names and email addys and stuck it in the box.

She wrote a couple of weeks later and told me how much they'd all enjoyed the stuff. She mentioned that she was 20 years old and enlisted in the Army for college money - pretty normal reason. When I wrote her back I was very honest and said that I don't support the war but being from a military family I have sympathy for those who are there. She was good about this and responded that she sometimes thinks the war protestors are the ones who are *really* supporting them. So far, normal (yes, we have a 'good kid gone bad' ending coming up).

She put my email addy on her mailing list and unfortunately has the bad habit of doing mass emails of dumb jokes - I really hate that. Usually I just delete them unread but a couple of days ago I was taken aback to find one from her with the subject "Raghead". I opened it and the mailing was a tasteless racist joke about Arabs that she had added her approving bloodthirsty comments to. Great - we wreck the country and the only people capable of defending the civilian population consider them 'ragheads'.

I have a cousin who's just returned from his second tour of Iraq and he too spouts this hatred of Arabs - and he was never like that before. He was actually a gentle lad who now thinks we should 'bomb Iraq into glass'.

What George Bush is doing to our young people (and yes, to the people of Iraq) is unforgiveable. What the Republican party with their easy hatreds and scapegoating and racism is doing is just as responsible. What a sick culture this 'family values' bunch has brought us!

[YouthInAsia]

1. Well first off, they are just kids. And second, they ARE kids

who are getting shot at and blown up so I could understand where the anger may come from. I'm not saying its right and its incredibly immature, but I can somewhat understand why they'd be so angry. If someone was trying to kill me, whether my govt had sent me there illegally or not, I would still be pissed at them. LIke the soldiers in WWII who hated the Germans or the japanese. They were killing their friends, and vice versa.

[MaggieSwanson]

2. It's disillusioning, isn't it

She's a 20 year old kid stuck in a situation where perhaps the only way she can rationalize what she's doing is to dehumanize the Iraqis.

I'm not excusing her behavior in any way - I want to make it clear that I find it despicable.

But I'm sad for her lost humanity.

[neverforget]

11. They dehumanize Iraqis so they can fight (kill) them (the enemy).

I think it's how our brain deals with the trauma and stress of combat and an all around shitty situation. Not saying it's right, just giving a possible explanation....

[silverojo]

13. Of course their humanity is lost

Why else would you go in for a career in which you're paid to kill people? The military is 4-to-1 hardcore Freeps. The problem I have with it is that, when we bring them back, our society is going to have to deal with this re-influx of sickoids...made even sicker by being allowed to live their fantasy of dehumanizing and killing people.

Next time you're feeling charitable, PLEASE help a more deserving group: The needy families and elderly folks here at home. With Bush cutting food stamp benefits daily, they need ALL the help you can give them.

[Katherine Brengle]

3. Honestly...

I don't know the young woman, so for all I know, she could be a horrible racist bitch, but--

My husband just got back from Iraq, and he met a lot of really great Iraqis while he was there, but he makes fun of them in general quite often (not any he knew personally, just the entire country).

I just take it in stride, because I know he doesn't hate Arabs or Iraqis--he's just telling whatever jokes he knows from the past year of his life. They may be tasteless, but he can only share what he knows, and this is what he has known since the last time I saw him.

The situation these soldiers are put into breeds this type of behavior. It doesn't make them bad people--it makes them human.

[w8liftinglady]

6. my son-the same situation

his first tour of Iraq-before he went to fallujah(which totally fucked with his head)

after his second tour of Iraq,he had terrible things to say about iraqis-i'm sure to make things right in his head.it's hard to kill people you like

[Katherine Brengle]

9. My husband was in Fallujah as well --

but not when the real shit was going down.

Mostly he talks about the place, rather than the people, but every once in awhile something will slip out, and I am not going to reprimand him for expressing his frustration or whatever however he needs to.

I agree with that premise--it isn't easy to kill people who you like (although I am not certain my husband ever found himself in this position--to my knowledge he was only in one real firefight, and the outcome was murky to me)...

[Neecy]

12. sure...

And this is why I didn't hit the reply button and bitch her out for sending me that racist crap. I guess however she's coping is up to her.

She's not in a combat unit, though, so I'm not sure how much pressure she could be under. She does Power Point presentations for her CO, so her situation is probably much different from your husband and his experiences in Iraq. My cousin went through a lot of hell so I keep my mouth shut around him for now - the kid really came back with issues and I'm hoping he gets help.

[w8liftinglady]

7. sorry-dupe

[Kutjara]

4. Alas, the family values the Repubs espouse...

...are Manson Family values.

I'm not really surprised the young woman displayed the attitudes she did. When I was young, my father worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. We were stationed in Saudi for a couple of years and the attitudes of my schoolfriends and their parents were about as you describe. They called the locals "ragheads" and "sand ni---rs" and made jokes about taking "potshots at Bedouins" in their spare time. And this was in peacetime. I can only imagine how much worse it is during the current "war."

[sutz12]

5. They did that to my generation in Vietnam...

Now they are doing it to another generation. :puke:

War brutalizes its participants. No way around that.

[Drewskie]

8. Yea and my dad who remembers Pearl Harbor still uses the term Japs (nt)

[SeattleGirl]

10. The nephew of a friend of mine sent her a letter, talking about "ragheads"

It was a rather nasty letter, (he was stationed in Iraq at the time), and he had never ever talked in such a racist way before. My friend was quite upset at what she saw happening to her nephew. My thought at the time, and my thought now about this young woman who emailed that tasteless joke, is that they are taking their fears and frustrations out on the easiest targets -- the natives of the land in which they are stationed. Maybe some of them don't want to be there (hell, probably a LOT of them don't want to be there), but they can't defy their commanders, they can't speak about against Bush, so their emotions come out at the most convenient target.

I don't say that to excuse calling people "ragheads" or any other derogatory name. I'll tell you what makes me think the way I do. I am a vocational rehabilitation counselor; I deal with people injured on the job. Oftentimes when people get into the worker's comp system, they're told to "jump" and the only response they get to have is to ask "how high?" It's nearly impossible for them to get through to their claims managers, they think their doctors are gods so they don't say anything to them, and they think their attorneys are above reproach. So, I'm often the one who gets hit with the majority of their frustration at not understanding the system they're in, not knowing their rights or responsibilities, etc. And I let them vent for awhile (though I draw the line at abusive talk or actions), and then I explain things to them. While the situations are vastly different, I do think that the soldiers are, in many ways, taking their frustrations out on the only people they can -- or perceive they can.

On another note, I do think it's cool that your soldier wrote back to you. I picked a soldier from Adopt a Soldier awhile back. It was a young woman who worked in a clerical capacity in the Green Zone. She wasn't asking for much; mostly a few "girly" things, which she and her female companions didn't have. So, I put together some "girly" things -- barrettes, headbands, scunchies, nail polish, lipstick -- and also some necessities like baby wipes, etc. I also threw in some Christmas candy and decorations her whole office could share, and some puzzle books, etc. I never did hear from her. They do make it clear on the Adopt a Soldier site that you can't demand that the soldier respond to you, but I did give the young woman my email addy. But yeah, I was a little disappointed I didn't hear from her but I'm still glad I sent the stuff. If it brought even a little smile or a little joy to her and her companions, that's good. Because that's the main point of what I did.