Former airman Keith Boyea explores how war reshaped his worldview:
My identity, once wrapped up in the righteousness of American militarism and exceptionalism, was destroyed. Iraq, of course, was a shit show from the start, but Afghanistan, through a number of factors not worth recounting here, became one several years in. It became obvious that the people entrusted to run our country were either ignorant or liars. As a result, I felt that my willingness to serve and sacrifice was exploited. Put differently, a bunch of chuckleheads exploited my identity. As it turns out, this isn’t an uncommon feeling. Nancy Sherman, in her book The Untold War, writes of veterans, “None want their willingness to serve exploited for a cause unworthy or for a cause or for a war grounded in unjustifiable fear or waged in pretext…when they believe that has happened the betrayal felt is profound.” (Page 47)
I have not faced the consequences of war up-close and have nothing but awe for those who have. But my own, much more cloistered experience as a war supporter is similar. I will never think of America the same way after the Bush-Cheney administration. They ripped the scales off my eyes; they proved that America isn't, in the end, different; that its core moral principles, such as the prohibition of torture, are nostrums to be tossed aside at the whim of a few very scared and incompetent men; that the rule of law ends when it comes to presidential power, when he can simply order dipshit lawyers to say black is white; when no regret is ever truly expressed about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died under US occupation; when the architects of these strategic and moral disasters are given legal immunity and peddle books on talkshows defending and bragging of their own awful legacy.
It has sickened me – the lack of morality, the lack of accountability, the constant recourse to mass amnesia. And in a man like Perry, you see all the characteristics of this belligerent, diplomatically autistic, aggressively stupid, and fundamentalist psyche. The dragon we thought we had slain is stalking the land again.
The Dish 