This may sound cold

But I don't want to hear anymore that this is not what the people in the National Guard signed up for. This is exactly what they signed up for. They may not have believed it would happen, but this is what they signed up for and they all should have known it.

They can blame recruiters for saying that odds are they would never have to go anywhere just like I could have checked to see that they gave me station of choice and let me choose a place that didn't have the MOS I chose and therefore I became a fueler instead of a fuel researcher. I was mad at my recruiter for a long time, but I knew that his lack of full disclosure was a possibility going into the process.

I do feel for the people who signed up for college money or because they only wanted a weekend of drinking away from the family. I just don't feel bad for them. I wish they didn't have to be used, but after cuts in active military personnel over the last decade or so, you have to know that your being used to supplement the forces is a possibility.

We used to talk trash about the Guard/ Reserve people in training because when we were shipping off to our duty stations, they were going home for a month or so with no military responsibility. Many of them looked at things a lot different than we did because of that and thought of it more as a part time job than an obligation. Sure they had signed up for 7 years, but they say it as 50 days at most unless there was a flood or some natural disaster. They all knew what could happen though because many Guard and Reserve units were activated during the Gulf War.

I knew people who loved to get deployed in the Guard for their 179 day "trips." To Greece (a couple of times) and Bosnia they gladly went for training. They even were proud to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 when they knew what they were fighting for. It was just when called upon to do the job they signed up for but didn’t agree in that they decided they were being misused.

I wish none of our military personnel were in Iraq. They shouldn't be there and I have no problem with people opposing their being there because it was an unjust and unnecessary war. I just don't want to hear that "this is not what they signed up for" again. Every clause on my contract said, "____, or needs of the Army." I knew that meant I did what the Army wanted whether or not I liked it or thought it was my job to do. You do it anyway, because that is what you signed up for whether or not you think it is.