Who do you fight for?

I read some stupid fucking comment the other day by some left wing nutbag (haven't found a link) who suggested that military enlistment would increase under the Rudd government because Rudd would be less likely to send our forces into combat.

That comment was clearly made by someone who has never served in the military, or perhaps even met anyone that has ever donned a uniform.

It's 17 years since I took my part time uniform off, and I never heard a shot fired in anger. But at the time, I wouldn't have minded brassing up the enemies of our country, and was gutted that Hawke wouldn't send us to Iraq for Round One. I quit not long after, figuring that there was no point in spending another 7 years square bashing and firing blanks out in the shrubbery.

Dickhead didn't seem to get the point that people like me sign up to serve our country, and fight for it if need be. But the government is not our country. As Downer put it the other day, the government is only "borrowing" the job at the moment. The country is a permanent thing; the government is transient. I served under that fat useless fuck Beazley, and his Master, Hawke. If they had sent us off to bayonet people in same dark shithole on the other side of the planet, I would not have been fighting for them. I would have been fighting for my country.

Don't confuse the two.

So to suggest that more people will want to serve under Rudd shows that fuckface can't separate the two, and thinks that Rudd is now Australia. A modern version of "Le etate - ce moi", or however it goes.

If anything enlistment will go down, because people like me join wanting to see a bit of action. I don't mean we want to go and refight WWII - but we want to be somewhere doing something. Sitting on your arse all day in barracks is not my idea of doing something. Sailors join the Navy to sail, not to sit around tied up to the wharf. Infantrymen join up to visit interesting countries, experience other cultures and then kill people. Pilots join the Air Farce to fly, not play Nintendo.

Softcock academics might like to sit around all day pontificating about what an evil bastard I am, but that's just how it is. I'm a sane, sober family man these days with no desire to even have harsh words with a drunk up at the corner pub, but there was a time when I found the sight of tracer drifting over the hills at night to be a sublime thing. If you want to attract young studs to the military, give them something to look forward to, like things that go BLAT, BOOM and BLAM (preferably in interesting foreign climes).