As I sit here on this the 11th day of September 2003, two years after the infamous attack on our nation. I think of the reactions that sprung from that blatant display of cowardice. The incredible show of national pride, the unfailing support of the military, and the unimaginable acts of valor and selfless service. Yet I step back and remember the exactly where I had been and the situation that had existed around me at the time of that great tragedy. I realized that, though this nation is great it is terribly fickle with its support.
At the exact time the Towers fell, I had been working what I had thought would be my last hour of my 12 hours mission in a windowless building 16,000 miles away. In the small, yet important country of South Korea, my fellow soldiers and I were combatants in a war that has persisted for over 50 years. The United States underwent vast changes at that time, yet very little had changed at my location. Security measures had increased and our free time vanished. But we were used to that, it is what we constantly drilled and exercised. For those of us stationed in South Korea all of our exercises were now a reality. The only thing that really changed was now we had an active enemy in addition to the enemy massing at our borders.
Everyday my fellow soldiers and I were staring at a curtain of death. Never knowing when or if that thin fabric would fall and all hell would break out. Yes, we had not been in an "active conflict", but only by the legal term of it. All of our encounters had been labeled as "accidents" and "misunderstandings". The "accidental" artillery strikes on our guard towers, the "misfired" shots at soldiers on guard duty, or the "misunderstanding" of flight zones when our planes and helicopters were shot out of the sky. With unflinching certainty we were called "The 72 hour speed bump to Seoul." Should that curtain ever fall, our life expectancy would drop to 72 hours.
