Simple Analysis

(Full size image link: http://simple-analysis.blogspot.com/2009/11/24nov09-todays-youth.html)

Working at a sporting goods store gun counter here in Fairbanks Alaska I run across all sorts of people.  Generally, I'd say its always a good experience.  However, there are always trouble customers, high maintainence customers, and just plean mean folks.  One of the advantages of working at a gun counter, is the mean folks can be sent away pretty easily, that whole "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" being backed up by the possibility of a call to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives AFTER the local police department handles the situation tends to keep the worst of the worst away (during store hours anyway...).

One class of mean folks is featured here.  They are of an older generation that has lost touch with what is going in the world today.  For the most part, it isn't the veteran community that is like this, but there are a few unfortunately that have forgotten what it was like to have served apparently.  Or maybe they forget that when they served, it was when they were young, and when they were young, this situation probably drove them just as crazy at it does me now.

Being a graduate of the Class of 2000, I'm not necessarly young anymore in the eyes of the kids graduating this year, but to most of society above the age of 40 I'm 'young'.  Yet, since the year 2000 when I joined the Air Force, the world has changed.  I was weird as a kid in high school who didn't take ACT's or SAT's, or even apply to college, I was Patriotic and wanted to enlist ever since I was in third grade and watched Desert Storm on the news.  My dad was a Cold Warrior and served from 1978 to 1988, he was (and is still) my hero.  That is why I joined the military.  On 9/11/2001, I was getting ready for my very first National Training Center rotation out of Ft. Irwin with my Squadron to support our Army brigade.  We didn't know where we would be from there.

That is my background, which is why it inffuriates me so much to see folks who have become so senile that they forget or just don't care that there are folks under 30 who actually volunteer to leave the world of the latest iPhone, Cars, and whatever else behind and go to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight for this country.  They come up to me at the gun counter and look at me, and because I'm not even thirty, they just start talking to me like I'm some idiot teenager that couldn't possibly know about the 230 gr. .45 ACP ammunition I'm selling them and its tactical applications in close quarters combat.  Should I find a hat or something that says "Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran" on it?  Do I have to wear my service on my sleeve?  We live in a military town, it should be pretty easy to see the mark of my service in the manner in which I carry myself!  To ASSUME that I have no clue what sacrifice is, to ASSUME that I have no idea what service is, is to do what such assumptions and stereotypes do; destroy your credibilty.

Every name on this cartoon has a pretty close meaning based on some sort of relation to my life that these young men had.  Cpl. Jason Karella was born in Fairbanks AK, graduated in Anchorage AK, and went on to join the USMC and serve in Iraq and finally in Afghanistan, he is listed here  because I live in his home town now and had the great honor of meeting his father and brothers and giving them a drawing of Jason that I did after hearing the news on the radio; thanks to the assistance of a local radio show host who helped facilitate the meeting!  SSgt. Christopher Frost was a Combat Cameraman who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq, his photography is posted on Deviant Art (where my gallery is located) under his page http://handbanana001.deviantart.com/, while I never did get to meet this man, he did a lot to show the world what the US Air Force was like and what we did in Iraq in a very hostile rhetorical environment on the web toward that mission.  SSgt. Frazier and A1C Losano are two USAF 1C4X1's who are the first Radio Operator Maintainer and Drivers (ROMADs, and in Frazier's case the first Joint Terminal Attack Controller which is a fancy name for an enlisted Forward Air Controller) to die due to enemy fire since Vietnam duing the duties of our career field.  None of them was over the age of 25 when they were killed.  Whenever an older person starts disparaging the youth, I can't help but get mad, after all my context is the sacrifices of my peers around me, and not just those that died but those who are like me and lived through this and carry with our experiences in war for better or for worse.  We gave the best years of our lives to Uncle Sam while most of our peers live a peaceful existence.  Yes, this generation certainly knows about sacrifice; some just choose to ignore it while others of us have left pieces of our selves in the sands of Iraq or on the rocks of Afghanistan just like our forefathers did in the mud of Korea and the jungles of Vietnam.  History repeats...

...please do remember that next time you come up to a counter and talk with the 'young' clerk.  You never know, physically he might seem to be 27, mentally he might just about be around 54.  War does that...