September 11, 2005

It's September 11th today. Does it seem like four years have passed? If you watch the news it seems more like for decades have passed, they have long forgotten the 3000 innocent lives lost that day. For me, it feels more like four days. I can remember vividly the confusion of the day. I was at my shop, doing final preparation for my unit's deployment to the Mediterranean. I had no idea what was going on, I just remember people walking around talking about all these things they were hearing on the radio. My Gunny wouldn't let us go out to our cars and listen, so I was in the dark. It wasn't until lunch that I found out what was happening. The TV in the chow hall was on the usual news channel, but the news was anything but usual.

I can't begin to describe the feeling. I stared into the TV and realized that everything had just changed. I had been preparing to sail overseas for the past year. I'd heard the stories about all the stops we'd make for liberty. We were going out into the big friendly Mediterranean to stand guard on behalf of our country. Now, as I looked into the TV, I was coming to realize how our mission was changing. As I looked at that TV people were starting to consider how the country would react. It was obvious that there would be a place for the military in their plans, and being on the verge of a deployment, the 26th MEU would surely be included in the plans.

When it came time to leave that day, we were told to get our gear ready to leave in the morning. This was over a week before we were scheduled to leave. I made hasty arraignments to be ready to go in the morning. The morning came, and we were told to go to work. It turns out the initial plan for the 26th MEU was to go to NYC to assist in the recovery of the victims at the World Trade Center. This plan was scrapped when the sun came up on NYC to the sight of hundreds of volunteers ready to go to work. They had the heavy equipment that was required for the job; there was no need for our heavy equipment. We were put back on schedule to leave on the 19th of September.

We left on the 19th, knowing that at some point in the next few months we would be called upon to be part of whatever plan our country had made. We were called upon, and we carried out our mission. Now I'm sitting in a computer lab at a university library in Alaska. It still feels like only yesterday though. I can feel that same feeling in my stomach now that I had then. This is why I continue to support any effort to stop terrorism, wherever it is. Do we need to live through another September 11th? I don't need to, I'm ready to see an end put to terrorism now. I just wish there was more that we could do.

As a member of the military you are restricted to doing only what you are allowed to do. Your orders come down from above, and you choose how to carry out those orders, but you don't get to decide what those orders will be. When I was in the Marines, I wanted time and time again to get orders to go help people. I wanted orders to Somalia, to Kosovo, to Rwanda. I wanted orders to Iraq and Iran and Syria and Afghanistan and North Korea. In four years I spent 60 days doing what I was trained to do. The rest of the time I was simply training. This is what frustrated me the most about my time in the Marines. We had so much power, so much potential, but we were not allowed to use it. I could have helped people, if I had been given the chance.

Now that our military has the chance to carry out a mission, to help bring freedom to a part of the world that has never known freedom, what do we see? We see Americans becoming more and more impatient. They want an "Exit Strategy." They want our leaders to make a plan to remove our troops. They don't want our leaders to make a plan to provide a free and stable Iraq. This is exactly what the people in uniform want; the chance to leave a legacy of a free and stable Iraq. I wish we could all come together on this, speak with one voice to the world and say we will stand for nothing less. Instead we increasingly hear people saying all they want is our troops out of Iraq, damn the mission.

We have the opportunity to create something great in Iraq, to set a people free, let's not piss this chance away.

Brandon