For those of you who aren't paying attention or don't really see me that much, I am dating a soldier. His name is Joey, he's a sergeant in the US Army and is over in Iraq right now. I met him through mutual friends who thought we'd hit it off (if only because we're close in age, and we both are infamous for dating older people), and we definitely did, and things are great.

I have been getting random weird-ass emails from people asking me about what it's like to date a soldier, and even weirder emails from other army girlfriends. And yet EVEN WEIRDER (and much more annoying) emails from self-proclaimed, college-aged politicos who ask me how I feel about the war, and how Joey feels about the war.

So.
You asked, so I'm going to tell.

I'm anti-war by nature. I don't like war, I don't like the idea of civilians who aren't responsible for the problems in the first place being killed, I don't like mass destruction of any kind. When we invaded Afghanistan after the attacks on the World Trade Center, I was freaking out because I had friends in the military who were going over there on the first run and because I felt like we could have done a lot more diplomatically first. However, as the years went on and we moved to Iraq, I just kind of became bitter about the whole thing. I still feel like the American public doesn't know the entire truth about the reasons for going to Iraq... some of which are probably being kept from us for security reasons, but I get pissed when the reasons we were told were, one after another, proven false or just flat-out lies by our Commander in Chief.

Frankly, I don't know where I stand on the war. I don't like war in general, and I don't like feeling like America is trying to police the world without really understanding the places we're policing. Iraq is a country where socialism (some forms much worse than others) has worked for a long, long, long time. We can't expect to go in, over throw that government, capture its dictator for execution by his people, and then force democracy on the country and hope it works out as well as ours has. COME ON.

People think that because Joey is a solider and is on his second tour in Iraq that he has some special insight into the situation. He definitely has more first-hand knowledge of what's going on in his part of the country (Mosul, the second-largest and most violent city in Iraq, where Christians have been fleeing because they're being massacred) but he doesn't have any bright, shiny, sparkly, mind-boggling opinions on the Iraq War. The strongest opinion I've gotten out of him about it is that he wants to come home, and that living in the desert with a bunch of other guys really sucks balls. Joey is just like every other American as far as his opinions on war go... he's just doing his job.

In that respect, I'm against the war. I want my boyfriend to come home and be somewhere where I don't have to worry about him being blown up by an IED, or shot at, or have to avoid habitual movement outside on the base because snipers would be able to predict his movements and kill him.

Being an "army girlfriend" is something that I never saw coming, that's for sure. For anyone who's known me for any period of time at all, it's not a secret that i'm not excessively patriotic... I've always been glad to be an American, but I'm not a flag-waving, national-anthem singing, AMERICA IS #1! kind of gal. It's weird being in a relationship where I can't call my boyfriend; I have to wait for him to call me. It's stressful as hell sometimes because I carry around a varying amount of anxiety with me on a day-to-day basis... sometimes it's so much I can't think straight, and at the least, it's just a little worry. Despite the stress of being with someone who shoots guns on tanks for a living, Joey is worth it to me. He's wonderful, he's a guy who understands why honor and self-discipline are so important to me, and because he doesn't mind my belching and swearing. We click, and I can't even put my finger on why or how, exactly.

But there you have it. I'm an army girlfriend. I'm proud to be dating a soldier, but before that... I'm just proud to be dating a guy who I respect, care for, and know is a good person, solider stuff aside.


So... hopefully that answered the annoying questions I've been getting...