It is no secret here that I'm currently deployed to, and unsupportive of, the War in Iraq. My Battalian is attached to a different Brigade then the one we normally fall under in the states, and so I work mainly with soldiers who are from a different battalian then mine. That battalian is starting to get semi-official word that there is a deployment in the works for them the May after they get back. Keep in mind that we are supposed to be returning to the states in August. That means a pretty short turn over. There have also been rumurs of a similarly short turn around for my unit, which would mean a stop-loss for me. Those thoughts, coupled with the current discussion of Iran, have caused me to think some about my future.
The fact is that I signed a contract to serve for at least six years after 9/11. I was fully aware when I signed of the possibility of a stop loss because I read the contract before I signed it. I was willing to except that possibility because I assumed that the army would be used to fight and defeat those who had attacked America. You attack my nation, I attack back. Of course, I had no way of predicting the years of craziness that would follow, or I was at least to naive to predict them. Nevertheless, I knew what I was doing and I did it willingly. For that reason, as long as the actions required of me are Constitutional, I don't see a way for me to quite before my contracts exporation while maintaining my pride and honor. That last sentence sounds like propoganda but there it is.
All that said, I am well into my second deployment and am facing the possibility of a third one (complete with stop-loss) and, to be frank, it sucks balls. This nation has allowed itself to be lead down a path of overt agression that has brought us into a conflict that has become practically unwinable. In the midst of that conflict, we have begun to flirt with the idea of starting, or at least stoking the fires of, another battle that promises to be at least as disasterous as the one we are already in. Make no mistake, the seemingly impending collision with Iran is intimately tied to our actions and commitments in Iran.
Because of the fact that I'm here, I have limited access to some of the intel that our nations leaders reference. For what it's worth, the case against Iran features much less bullshit then the one against Iraq did. It may be drummed up and exagerated, but it does at least exist, which is more then can be said of the case for our invasion of Iraq. But even with that fact, there is almost no action against Iran that would not be foolish and wrong-headed. Almost any military course available would increase the pressure on American troops from Iran. It also seems to me that, barring a full scale invasion and regime change, a military course could very well push Iran to expand its state sponsered terrorism beyond todays levels and to the level it was at in the decade just after the revolution.
For the most personal of reasons, I am against the sort of brinkmanship games that our President is playing in regards to Iran. I have no desire to deploy for a third time, but assuming I will have to, I sure don't want to deploy to an Iraq facing the sorts of escalated covert and militant Iranian influence that an overly aggresive action would ensure. But I don't feel guilty for opposing it for selfish reasons because my reasons are the same reasons as many other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. As service-members we face repeated deployments with little more than a year, if we're lucky, in between. Recently there has been talk of lengthening some deployments from a year to 18 months in length. I am hardly an expert on military history, but it doesn't take an Eisenhower or a Clark to realize that an Army can function under that sort of pressure for only so long.
To me, it is very important that we as a nation remind our Congressmen of the pressures on the military that an Iranian action would entail, along with the pressures that the current deployment cycle already impose on service members and their families. And while it may sound like I'm passing the buck, there's only so much I can do while I'm in. A lot has been said in this community and on the wider blogosphere about the need to not lose sight of the problems of Iraq while worrying about future relations with Iran, but I think that point misses the larger picture. Any Iranian conflict would be closely tied to the Iraqi one. Period. Pressure on Congress about Iran is just as important as pressure on Congress about Iraq.