I have recently come back from an eight month deployment in Iraq serving directly to the north of Baghdad. The heart of the Sunni triangle or as I like to call it "not a place I would like to own a summer home." I could tell many of you about the numerous achievements we had or the many mistakes we made but either of those concepts immediately gets intermingled with politics, which I would prefer to avoid. (It’s not that I don’t talk about the politics of the Iraq War-some of my friends would say I talk too much about it, but I would prefer a different emphasis for this essay). I could also tell you about the achievements I have had personally since joining the Army but many of those achievements feel more like simply surviving the experience (which on more than one occasion was an achievement). However, I beg your patience and for any of this article to make much sense you will need to know at least a little bit about me so please indulge me for something I hope, you will feel was worth your time.

I was raised in a small town in Iowa. Went to Michigan for my undergrad and went off to work in the world for an international telecom company from my hometown. By 25, I had done business on four continents (still have not been to Australia and I am pretty certain the penguins in Antarctica do not need phone cards but then I did not have a chance to see March of the Penguins) and in over thirty countries. I had some great experiences and some horrible experiences, much like anyone else. In the summer of 2000, I was working for a high tech startup and things were not going well. I received an offer to move to New York City and jumped at the chance. The job was working for an established but recently purchased direct marketing firm so I was going to be well paid-not always necessary but crucial to survival if you are living in Manhattan.

As with many newly purchased companies, the new owners believed they could unlock some hidden value that the previous owners were unaware of, thus the rational of a premium. They were right and wrong in ways they were not prepared to deal with and the short story was that my job changed right before my eyes into something a well trained monkey or slightly creative clerk could have done. I’m sure this sounds familiar to a number of you (who are hopefully still reading at this point). Anyway, life in New York was, well, still life in New York: challenging, exhilarating, frustrating, and amazing all at the same time. In adapting to my new role in the company I simply was prepared to sacrifice my job satisfaction in order to pay for my life, which was extremely satisfying-even fulfilling-most of the time.

After about six months or so of this (right about my one-year anniversary at the company) I realized I should start looking for another job and maybe think about going back to school. So I signed up for Kaplan’s GMAT class and started talking to recruiters. Unfortunately for me my timing was off as it is in many situations (if you don’t want to believe me I can give you contact info for many ex-girlfriends and even more almost but not quite girlfriends). I was too late to apply to any grad program and in the post dotcom bubble, the jobs were not as easy to find as they once were but I was able to be patient since one of the exceptionally smart things I did was to negotiate a two year contract for myself prior to moving to New York. Then came September 11^th.

I wish I could convey the trauma of that day to those of you who were not there. It is still, five years after the fact something I am not very good at communicating. It would take a far better writer than I to express the pain of that day. You all saw the photos but we lived with it. Lived with smell of 3,000 of our friends and relatives burning in our nostrils for weeks after the attacks. Lived with the blank looks on neighbors and fellow citizens just too shocked to deal with the pain and trauma. Lived with the memory of our innocence on that crystal, clear blue sky of that Tuesday morning. And then I watched as it all went to hell.

I watched as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked article six for the first time in its fifty-year history. I watched as the French paper Le Monde declared, "We are all Americans today." I watched as the entire country came together gearing itself up for a war we did not fully understand. I watched as the Bush Administration squandered the good will of the entire world as it pursued a strategy that confused everyone who thought about it.

After 9/11 I finished up my time in New York thinking that I wanted to do more, to contribute more to the epic struggle my country was going through, even though I disagreed with our methods. In fact, more so because I disagreed with our methods. You see I believe that it is critical for a citizen to support their nation in a time of crisis and even though that citizen (me) may not agree with it’s methods it is still important, more so, to make every effort to do the right thing on the ground and in the moment. That, in essence, is how I saw my role.

I did stop by Harvard on my journey and completed a Master’s degree in international relations but that only strengthened and helped articulate my views and feelings. Now, in case you think I am totally altruistic let me just state that I also joined the Army for very selfish reasons, namely that I thought it would provide me a unique experience that would help my own personal development and allow me to deal with a few shortcomings and fears in very direct manner. In general, my experiences have proven my intuition correct. So, I threw caution to wind and joined up. (I know the mature thing to say would be that I never looked back but I’m sorry, at mile 11 of a 12 mile road march at 2 am, I started questioning everything including my will to live, sometimes survival sucks).

Once I had made my decision to join the Army I began experiencing my first disappointment which was when people questioned why in world I would join the Army in a time of war, especially after getting a Harvard degree. It was never troubling to that my close friends and family asked this since I never really had given them any indication that this was path or passion that I had so understand why this hit them from left, so to speak. My mother in fact, upon hearing that I had been accepted to Officer Candidate School, stated that I should not expect her to be doing cartwheels. No, my disappointment really stemmed from others such as the people who felt pity for me like this was something I had been trapped into, after all what sane person wants to go to a war? The others that upset me were those people (some even from within the Army) who after hearing my story just could not understand why someone with a Harvard master’s degree would ever choose to enter into the Army.

I started thinking about why this was upsetting and disappointing me and the origins of this general disbelief. There was a time and place in our history where joining the military was viewed as an act of service rather than a lack of options. I can think of a few concepts that might have led to this development. One thing that very few people are probably aware of is that historically America has had an extremely small standing military much to the frustration of many leaders both civilian and military. In fact, it was only as recently as World War II that we decided as a nation that a standing military was critical to our survival, of course, the Soviets and the Cold War made for a convincing argument.

The result of having a smaller and to a certain extent, more exclusive military was that the quality was much higher which makes sense for obvious reasons. When you have a smaller number of volunteers you are able to be control the quality of the organization much more. The outcome of having a more quality organization is that a better reputation is created within the population at large leading to a far better reaction when a young man decided to join the military. Then came the Cold War and Vietnam, a war that I believe we are still dealing with the repercussions of, both politically and militarily. With the coming of the Cold War, America had to maintain a large military force and the aftermath of Vietnam created both a poor perception of the military, the Army in particular, as well as the creation of the all volunteer force.

Back to my more personal feelings, it seemed that gone were the days that military service was regarded as a noble calling. Those that did regard it as a noble calling were generally the conservatives who were always anxious to start a war they would never participate in and the liberals who were always fearful of being derided as anti-military. The end result for me was a disingenuous feeling. It's not that I was really interested in a great deal of attention, though I am certain on some level it fed my vanity and ego, it was more that when people were so far from understanding why anyone would volunteer I was left with a feeling of frustration. I had a great deal more respect and even appreciation for those people who simply said "Thank you" or an even more involved "Thank you for doing a job that so few people are willing to do." I realize that for me, I have a very different perspective both on volunteering and serving, which is freedom.

The freedom I speak of is my own personal freedom, I am where I am because I choose to be there (or I should say here) more than any other place, more than doing any other thing. I am in the Army, not because I have to or that I have a debt of service but because there is nowhere else I would rather be. That freedom is something I truly treasure because it allows me to continually strive (though I do not always achieve) to do the right thing because I have nothing to lose in terms of a career. It is an underlying basis that I hope I do not misplace in the day to day challenges.

The other disappointment I faced was following my homecoming from Iraq, when I took some leave and traveled to visit friends in New York. While I was there I had the opportunity to see a talk from Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a Harvard B-school grad and a top staff officer in US Central Command (which oversees the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in addition to maintaining military relations with numerous nations throughout the Middle East). The talk was at the Harvard Club of New York, one of the fairly posh exclusive clubs in midtown near Grand Central Station. The essence of his talk was "I can’t really talk about whether it was good or bad to go to Iraq but here is what we are doing and why we are doing it." He was promptly ignored and then grilled in a way I have not seen since the Clinton scandals of the late ‘90s.

What struck me as painful other than my supreme empathy for the general was how divided and angry everyone was in the audience. I mean of all the places I would have thought would be a last bastion of civility it would have been the Harvard Club but it was not to be. As I began my various travels around the country I found much to my disappointment that my experience in New York was hardly unique and this was remarkably disheartening. I know everybody says they support the troops and that does mean something, especially when care packages come. But imagine for a moment leaving the country for about a year only to come back and see your nation that you have literally just devoted your life to completely divided against itself. And the division is not simply a tactical or intellectual one but is true division with one side totally unable to change and adapt to evolving circumstances and the other side unable to provide a clear, coherent, consistent policy. It’s disheartening and almost depressing.

I should sum up that I certainly do not feel betrayed in any way by my country or the administration, I just feel, well, disappointed with the lack of continuity in the nation and our leadership. I am, by my own admittance, a naïve optimist so I remain hopeful. I remember very vividly a quote by James Baldwin I heard in a speech at a protest after the launching of the war:  "I love America more than any other nation in the world and for that reason, I reserve the right to criticize her perpetually." I think my disappointments speak more to a sadness that we have come to expect so much less from our leaders, our nation, and probably most tragically, ourselves. From the perspective of the military, if we, as a society, expect very little from our Armed Services, then very little is what we’ll get. But I remain, as always, hopeful.