I'm scared

I used to read the news with a sort of dispassionate feeling of detachment. I was a high school student, then a college student, then a low-wage worker, an exotic dancer, a volunteer firefighter. I paid attention to politics, but I never felt involved - I'm a Canadian citizen, so I can't vote, and nothing really affected me much anyway. I didn't honestly expect the government to fix the problems I saw every day, the poverty and homelessness and hopelessness, the domestic violence and the medical bills and the hungry kids. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I assumed they were doing their best.

I joined the Navy in March of 2004 to escape domestic violence. I hadn't thought much about the war in Iraq, but I remembered Saddam Hussein being a bad guy. I figured that I owed it to this country, which had educated me, fed me when I was hungry, provided medical care when I was pregnant - I owed some sort of debt of service. I swore my oath to defend the Constitution, and I meant it.

Join me below the fold.

I remember those words so clearly. "...to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I can't count the number of times we were reminded in boot camp that we owed our ultimate loyalty not to our officers, not to the President, but to the Constitution.

But now...now that document to which I pledged my loyalty has been twisted, mutilated to conform to the desires of a power-mad government. My Commander-in-Chief and my Vice President have declared themselves above the law. My own brothers and sisters in uniform torture innocent civilians - ordered, no doubt, by that same power-mad government. My friends and brothers die every day on the battlefields of an increasingly violent civil war, not to defend the United States or the Constitution or even freedom or democracy, but to maintain an occupation, to protect oil companies and war profiteers. And I stand idly by.

Even worse, these last few weeks, our power-mad government rattles its saber against a sovereign nation. Our Vice President and his cronies threaten acts of war - in defiance of the Constitution that he, like me, swore to uphold. We stand on the brink of a war the likes of which this world has never seen. And I am terrified - for I know that if I follow my leaders, I will be on the wrong side of that war. I will not only be helping to kill countless people in a war of aggression, but I will be placing myself in danger, on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, bait for missile attacks. And I will be doing all of this on the orders of the very people who have subverted and tried to disempower that document to which I swore allegiance. For they are domestic enemies of the Constitution, if ever there were such.

I'm not afraid to die. I knew when I signed my contract that I could die in the performance of my duties. But I'm afraid to die for the wrong reasons. Am I bound to serve these domestic enemies of the Constitution? Must I die for them? Must I kill for them? Would you send me and all my brothers and sisters in this futile war of aggression against Iran?

As I said, I'm Canadian. But I grew up here. This is my second home, and I love it as much as I love Canada. I owe a great debt to Medicaid, to food stamps, to the homeless shelters of Washington, D.C, to the House of Ruth (a battered women's shelter), to the fire department where I volunteered who gave me a roof over my head for months. I want to protect what is good here. I want to defend the Constitution that gave me the right to speak my mind as I am now. But I don't know how I can in good conscience board an aircraft carrier headed for the Gulf, knowing that I'm being used as bait, and that if I survive I'll be helping to kill thousands if not millions of innocent civilians, including the family of my daughter's father. I'm scared. Please forgive me.