Read This Post

I am not going to start off with a personal anecdote and suspend for once my delusions that this blog could be a jumping point my my New-York-Times-columnist career.

I am just going to say; read this article: "A Way Out of Debt By Way of Iraq."

It is about the men and women of this country that have chosen to go to Iraq to escape and eliminate their financial burdens.

At first, I thought, how interesting. Then, as I continued to read, I thought, how incredibly horrible and frightening. The article describes how people with massive amounts of debt find volunteering for Iraq an easy way to gain some quick cash and live in a low-cost lifestyle.

My country has left people with no choice but to sell their lives to escape their problems at home. I cannot believe this. I thought this was the land of opportunity, yet my fellow citizens are resorting to participating in warfare and violence to solve their individual problems, and financial ones at that.

I am reminded of a David Cross joke of him describing his reaction to watching a reality show: "Bush always says; 'the terrorists hate our freedom.' Well, I hate our freedom too, if this is what we do with it."

This is the land of the free, but these free people have been forced to resorting to risking their lives abroad to fix their lives at home. If this is what our freedom gets us, then it really isn't freedom.