Career soldiers or mercenaries ?

[kentuck]

Are our professional soldiers fighting for our country or fighting for money and career? Or are they fighting for whatever corporate interest needs protecting? Does anyone else get an uneasy feeling watching these "soldiers" being interviewed on cable television? "It's my job", they say. "I'm doing this because it is the right thing to do".

There is something unreal and difficult to define in these new "soldiers". Since when did they start making "political" decisions about their missions? The "right thing to do" in Iraq is to help those people build their country, they say. But are they really "helping" the people of Iraq?

But there is an uncomfortable component in attempting to define these career soldiers. They don't appear to be the "conventional" soldier we have been accustomed to seeing in battles or in combat. They are different. They have the appearance of mercenaries but they get paid less than mercenaries? But they approach their mission like mercenaries. Where are their real loyalties?

No doubt, people will ask "where are your loyalties" to question our soldiers? My concerns are to what extent will these "soldiers" go to fulfill the mission of their Commander in Chief? Would they think twice about doing the same mission in American streets that they are doing in the streets of Baghdad? There is something about the "new" soldier that I find very unsettling and uncomfortable. Difficult to define...