| "U.S. forces manning front lines in the Sunni Triangle where Iraq's insurgency rages frequently live in abandoned buildings, where they huddle against an early winter chill and excavate brown, plastic pouches of vacuum-packed meals for prized Skittles and M&Ms."
finding M&Ms and skittles is like winning the freakin lottery when it comes to MREs. 
so i haven't updated in about a month...i wonder where all that time went. i guess i've kinda just gotten lost in the endless attempt at catching up on my work that has become my life. school's draggin on as always, but i seem to be losing motivation this semester. i've actually started cutting classes and not doing homework.  yeah yeah, i know that's nothing new for most people, but i don't really do that, but with only a few more weeks of school left, i'm hoping that i'll be able to haul ass so i don't get screwed on finals, pray for me...
rotc's been taking up a little more of my time this semester too. somehow i got sucked into joining the ranger challenge team...not quite sure how they got me to go at 5 and do an extra hour of extra painful pt three times a week. i think they drugged me... anyways, the competition was last week. we faced off against 20+ schools in all your basic soldier skills. we got a bronze thing, which was last 1/3, but oh well, those people in like idaho have nothing better to do than train. he got em with our motto "We're smart, so you don't have to be!"
most of the stuff wasn't too bad, except for the ruck march. it was a 10km ruck march with 35 lbs in your ruck. not too bad if you're walking, really bad if you're running. especially when you're trying to keep a pace that would make a sergeant, who's been a ranger for 16 years, happy. my legs cramped up really bad at the 5km mark and the next 5km was the most painful of my life. the worst part was when we hit a road with quarter mile markings about 2km short of the finish line. i swear to god, those quarter mile markings had to be wrong. i mean a quarter mile isn't that long of a distance, but it felt like an eternity between them. crossed the finish line in 1hr and 29min. i was dead by the end, and i still haven't gotten feeling back in one of my toes...
rant disclaimer: this is not meant to insult or offend those who advocate peace, just a select group i've dealt with. by all means, advocate peace and keep me from getting shot 
when we were on our run the other day we three people try and start shit with us for no reason. one lady driving by stopped, rolled down her window and started yelling at us about getting hit by a car. another woman standing at a bus stop start chanting in protest as we ran by. and another guy deliberately ran in the way of our battalion commander while we were running. first of all, rotc is the only student group on campus that has to put up with this kind of crap and we're the only ones that are turning the other cheek. i don't get why they try to label us as belligerent war mongers, when they're the ones constantly going out of their way to provoke us. most of the time we let it slide because it is their right to say what's on their mind. we understand it's their right because we are training to protect it.
WE understand that there are rights given to everybody in this country and we respect it, anit-military people seem to feel these rights are exclusive to them. they demand our shirts be banned because they feel it isults them, yet they paint us as cold-blooded killers. they glue our flag pole shut so we can't raise our flag in the morning, yet they raise their protest signs high. they constantly make use of their freedom of speech and expression, but try to deny us ours. they don't have to have a U.S. flag in front of their house, but they have no fucking right to stop me from raising my flag in the morning. i'm getting tired of people excercising their rights, but not acknowleding the rights of others.
there's also this need for them to go after the military, even though civilians occupy the most powerful positions. the american people ( including anti-war protestors) elected and re-elected bush. he made the decision to go to war and had the power to make the decision, but they empowered him. if they didn't want this policy implemented, then as an american citizens they had the power to change it. they had the power to vote for a different president and persuade others to vote for a different president, but they didn't. now they feel to make a difference that they failed to make at the polls, they have to protest every part of the military. despite what you want to say about the military, it is necessary. people may not all be inherently evil, but there will always be that one person who will take an opportunity to gain. if you keep putting groups of 10 people into a room, locking them in for 10 days and telling them there is either enough food to sustain 10 people for 10 days or there's enough to sustain one person for 10 days, there will be that one person that grabs the gun on the wall and kills the other nine people.
here's a little fact, the rotc is about as far down the chain of comman as you're gonna get. there is absolutely no decision making power in the cal rotc program. so to those people who feel a need to go after rotc, back off, and at the very least, respect our right to enjoy the same freedoms we fight to protect. |
