For the first three decades after Vietnam, being in the military was not cool. My parents explained how many Americans were unable to separate the war policies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations from the soldiers carrying out those policies, many of whom were draftees to boot. In high school I read autobiographical accounts from Vietnam veterans who described being spit on in airports- even attacked- after barely surviving a hell on earth that those spitting on them had often found a way to avoid.

When I got to college, things were orders of magnitude better, but wearing your ROTC uniform was still not hip. Kids hoping to live out their own revolutionary fantasies would occasionally heckle us. One student told me: “Don’t die for your country dude,” others shouted “baby killer” at us. Local residents called the police to report us when we would go on early morning forced marches in full gear. Some professors noticeably condescended us when we wore our uniforms to class. The university had been trying to kick our ROTC unit off campus for decades. It was 1998.

For a brief moment in 2001, being in the service was both cool and properly respected. Citizens and politicians alike exhibited a guarded and appropriate reverence for young Americans’ sacrifices while serving in uniform. My parents’ friends were suddenly impressed with me. I was no longer on the fringe; I had street cred.

By 2004, things were still warm and people would sometimes offer to buy you drinks (which I declined), but a noticeable rift had formed in my perception. Americans were being over-exposed to nationalistic, jingoistic, troop-supporting rhetoric by politicians and media outlets, and were fatigued by it all. Also, they were increasingly skeptical about the Iraq War and the government that had sold it to them. At this point, pols began invoking the “needs of the troops” at every opportunity and using it as an unassailable position to attack their political rivals, with no thoughtful, logical concern for the troops they allegedly supported. Chevrolet began running ads with veterans and every sporting event, no matter how trivial, suddenly had a military color guard. The yellow ribbon magnets were everywhere. Even I was sick of it.

I was sick of it because it was hollow. It was patronizing. The sincere respect from 2001 and 2002 was gone. We had gone from being un-hip; a marginalized and misunderstood aspect of our federal government, to being heroes, to being rock stars, to being pawns in strategy shops from the Beltway to Madison Avenue, being used to create positive brand associations for products and politicians.


Tonight I put on the RNC convention. Fred Thompson was at the podium, talking about John McCain. On one hand, he effectively reminded me how remarkable Sen. McCain’s service in Vietnam really was, the details of which have been lost in the stump speeches and are truly impressive. On the other hand, Thompson poisoned this extraordinary story by coating it in transparent rhetoric and asserting that McCain’s experience alone makes him the de facto voice in politics for American veterans. Thompson then paraded McCain’s sons, a Marine and Naval Academy midshipman, in front of the delegates.

Is it possible to exploit yourself? Thompson’s RNC-scripted tribute aside, McCain himself has lately been beating voters over the head with his war experience, and in increasingly inane ways. When Jay Leno asked him jokingly if he could list the number of houses he owned, McCain switched to serious mode and explained that he had once been a POW. While one had nothing to do with the other, the symbolism of this exchange is important: John McCain, a war veteran who used to hold that experience close to his chest and debate issues on their merits alone, now uses that experience as carte blanche to defend any position, even one as benign and bizarre as not knowing how many homes his wife owns.


There are two major problems with the over-“honoring” of veterans by politicians. The first is that it is hypocritical. McCain’s campaign portrays him as the veterans’ candidate even though he campaigned against the Webb-Hagel GI Bill overhaul (the most important piece of pro-troop legislation in years) and tried unsuccessfully to launch a counter bill with watered down benefits. The second problem is that while both the DNC and RNC are rolling out their own veterans’ tributes, complete with Spielberg-directed films and McCain buddies wearing Medals of Honor, the bombast about honoring veterans on the campaign stage is not how our country actually honors veterans in the real world.

Even after it got cool to be a veteran for the first time since 1945, many veterans are still unequipped to succeed outside of the military. 195,000 are homeless according to the VA. Thousands are recently wounded, their expensive care being fought for tooth and nail by exhausted spouses. Those transitioning to civilian careers are constantly trying to figure out how to convince new employers that their experience in uniform is not only relevant but also competitive. “You don’t have work experience,” a headhunter recently told me after reading my resume. “You have world experience” (whatever that means). Americans like to talk about how brave and dedicated our country’s veterans are, but apparently taking a cue from our politicians, talking about it is often where it ends.

Thankfully, Vietnam’s abuses of veterans are a thing of the past. I wonder though, if veterans are any better understood today than they were then.


[Correction: original print stated Sen. McCain voted against the Webb-Hagel GI Bill. He abstained.]

Happy birthday 2 Dinar, and all our readers, new and old.

A year ago this week, we launched this web magazine with one main goal: connect Americans to the reality of the nation’s policies through the unique experiences of the country’s war veterans, and compel Americans to participate in our great democracy, as is their obligation as citizens.

Have we achieved that goal? If we have inspired just one American to go to the polls or write to his or her delegates, then we have been successful.

While we are an op-ed magazine, we are not of singular opinion, and our writers reflect a variety of different views on America’s actions, opportunities, and threats. What connects our writers is their service as warriors, their desire to see America live up to its full potential, and their undying belief that each American has both power and responsibility in our society.


In our first year of operation we logged 204,000 unique visits from readers all over the world and the United States, including The White House, Pentagon, and Department of State. To the readers who posted our address, linked to our site, or emailed our articles, thank you very much- our growth is owed almost entirely to your efforts.


For our anniversary, we asked our readers to vote on their favorite articles. There were two standout articles:

“What Mao Taught Us"

”Nothing Romantic About It”

We also promised we’d recap the articles and give a bit more insight, but Mac is getting ready to deploy, and I found I don’t have anything more to say on the subject of the President’s latter day lust for war. The articles speak for themselves.


Thank you for reading and please continue to share 2 Dinar with others. Above all, participate.

In 1947, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph took the anti-Jim Crow fight to Washington, meeting with President Truman and testifying before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Subsequent to his persistent efforts, in July of 1948, 16 years before the Civil Rights Act legally ended segregation in America, the US military was desegregated. Even before black Americans could simply ride in the front of a Montgomery public bus without being harassed, (then) Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was flying F-86 Sabres over North Korea as the commanding officer of the racially integrated 51st Fighter Wing.

When I was in The Basic School, a major gave us a lecture on equal opportunity. “We aren’t white or black, yellow or brown here,” she told us. “We’re just different shades of green,” referring to our perennial uniform color. It seemed kind of touchy-feely to us, but perhaps the metaphor had helped earlier generations of Marines bridge the race divide. From what I could sense, we hardly needed it.

In the room that day there were Latter Day Saints, Iranian-Americans, South African and Nigerian-born Marines, mulattoes, and Filipinos to name but a few of our diverse group. The only shades of difference I remember about those Marines were how well they soldiered and how funny their jokes were- I was more comfortable around them than I had been with the kids in my neighborhood growing up who were culturally, socio-economically, and religiously identical to me.

But there was one minority for which there was no sanctioned shade of green and one that the major wouldn’t even mention to us- the unrepresented, illegal military minority: homosexuals.


In 1994, after campaigning on a platform to allow gays to serve openly in the military, President Clinton introduced section 654 of the US Code’s Title 10: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). The compromise was an attempt to create a legal loophole to allow gays to serve in the military, but in some critics’ eyes, it merely created a legal tool to oust gays from the military, regardless of their performance.

The arguments waged against allowing gays to serve openly remain the same today: that homosexuals somehow threaten the efficacy of combat units by degrading unit cohesion:

The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability. [Section 654, Title 10]

This argument was made last week by Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness (a misnamed, unofficial, third party lobby) who, at a recent House Armed Services hearing on DADT, stated all gays should be banned from serving without any exceptions. In response, Iraq War veteran, Rep. Patrick Murphy [D-PA] honestly and personally denounced this argument: “You’re asserting that straight men and women in our military aren’t professional enough to serve openly with gay troops while successfully completing their mission, and as a former Army officer, I can tell you that I think that’s an insult to me and to many of the soldiers.”

The suggestion that there is any evidence to show openly gay servicemembers damage unit cohesion is totally specious- there are no such studies as there is no provision for gays to serve openly in the military in the first place. The argument that integrated (straight and openly gay) units would suffer a detriment to unit cohesion is purely subjective and based on personal opinion built on fear, the way the same argument was made about desegregating the military in 1947, as well as allowing women to serve as pilots and line officers.


The policy of discriminating against homosexuals and preventing them from serving openly in the US military is one that is passed off as being on behalf of the troops, when really it is at the expense of troops and on behalf of politicians themselves. Politicians wrapping themselves in the flag seek to convince you that they have the military’s best interests in mind: that the military is a “special culture” with its own values that need to be safeguarded. True, but discrimination is not one of them. That unit cohesion is essential to the type of work and lifestyle of serving in the military. True, but ripping qualified, motivated personnel out of their jobs because they are gay damages unit cohesion more than teaching troops to work with people who are different from themselves, which is the most essential element of military leadership in the first place. In the end, having soldiers living in fear of being “outed”, concealing their lives and lying to their comrades-in-arms like hunted fugitives, does more to damage unit cohesion than pretending DADT actually helps.


When I had a group of local surfers and a few Marines I had recently met over to my house for dinner in San Diego, I wasn’t sure how the two groups would interact. Would the Marines be typically conservative and brusque? Would the Californians annoy everyone with their faux enlightenment? In the end, I was happy to have my stereotypes shattered and my world come momentarily crashing down around me. After the surfers left, I sat with the Marines- Midwesterners mostly- and we incredulously recapped the night’s conversation in which the Californians made racist and homophobic jokes that the Marines had all found tasteless. Unexpectedly, in the course of two minutes, all the Marines asserted independently that they believed gays should be able to serve openly in the military as it was their right and privilege as much as ours. It remains one of my proudest moments in the military.


The American Paradox is the term used to describe America’s founding on principles of equality, but its sanctioning and sustainment of slavery. While the Civil Rights movement helped America correct some of its institutional hypocrisies and implement legal guarantees for all races of Americans, we are nonetheless living in another American Paradox today. America, she who fills the world’s airwaves with self-aggrandizing and accusatory rhetoric about freedom, equality, and democracy, has a second-class of citizens that are legally entitled to less because of their sexual orientation.

“Unequal treatment to one of us [military members] is unequal treatment to us all,” said Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, USA (ret.) at the subcommittee hearing last week. When Washington’s lobbies and politicians say that Americans who want to serve their country in the profession of arms are unqualified because of whom they chose to love in their personal lives, they are sabotaging the very “cohesion” they claim to be defending, and further poisoning our military culture that values and truly depends on diversity.

The rhetoric between politicians, lobbyists, and old guard veterans is heated, but if you poll the generation of Americans in the trenches, I’ll bet my retirement savings that the majority couldn’t care less what sexual orientation a soldier has. More importantly, I know that the US military, regardless of its members’ individual opinions, has the professionalism, discipline, and resolve to integrate openly gay members and adapt to any new social dynamics that a repeal of DADT would bring about. The result would be a stronger military rid of witch hunt politics and endorsed homophobia.

The military led the country in desegregation 60 years ago, but today has been forced to retain an antiquated, prejudiced, and inefficient policy that allies like the UK, Australia, Germany, and Canada have already done away with. Are we really the international icon of liberty and justice for all? How about liberty and justice for your gay war veterans as well? All they're asking for is the right to fight to the death to defend your freedom.


Do Something: Your Senators Your Representatives

Further Reading/Viewing: US Code 10 Section 654 NYT Time Magazine Vetvoice Congressional Hearing on Youtube Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., USAF

[Edits made]

For the last five years, my father has been living and working in Iraq. A former senior officer in the Marine Corps, he now works for one of the largest civilian contracting firms in the country. His experience there has been dichotomous: he’s had some of the most fruitful and productive working days of his life while simultaneously giving up much of his own hard-earned personal freedom.

My father’s main area of expertise is in the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), a Department of Army program that creates specific task orders to accomplish missions such as base life support at forward operating bases, transportation, and many other functions of combat logistics and service support.


Personally I remain torn by his decision to enlist with a civilian company to work in a protracted war that is seemingly endless. My father first came to Iraq after the initial invasion in 2003, which I was part of as an active duty Marine. The irony is that late in the summer of 2003, when I was on my way home from war, we crossed paths while my father was arriving in the country. Eventually, on my second tour in Iraq less than a year later, we were stationed at the same camp together for a stretch of time. A truly surreal experience is taking shelter from indirect fire with the man who taught you how to catch a baseball.


I recently met up with my father in Europe- it was only the third time I had seen him since 2004. Over a couple of pints and a cigar, we had our first meaningful and candid conversation about Iraq and America in quite a long time. Like many Americans, I want to understand what it means to be a civilian contractor in the most polarizing war since Vietnam. (As it happens, my father served as a platoon commander in that war.) I also needed to come to the terms with the fact that my father was doing something that appeared distinctly different than the way I had served in Iraq or he had served in Vietnam- his service in Iraq as a contractor seemed impure.

My father has never been known to wax poetic or bloviate about his job- he is a man who reserves his opinion for those times when it really matters. With characteristic reserve, he told me how he saw the contracting issue: He sees a stark distinction between logistics contractors and security contractors, a distinction that isn’t always clear to citizens. He believes that logistical contractors like himself provide a tremendous value to the military, whereas many security firms actually do more harm than good because of the way they perform military operations with little discipline and seemingly no accountability.


As we drank our glasses of dark bohemian lager, and lazily pulled on our cigars, he explained his staunch support of civilian contractors and their value to the US military: “Contractors put more military personnel into the warfighting mode rather than having to perform service related tasks which consume large amounts of manpower e.g. food preparation and serving, billeting personnel, servicing equipment, moving material.” But despite these benefits, he does believe that there have been some fundamental flaws in the relationship between the military services and LOGCAP program.


My father wishes people saw contracting as he and his peers see it- an extension of service to the country. When I asked him why he chose to go to Iraq he told me: “I wanted to contribute to the war effort due to patriotism and service, and my military skills and talents could be an attribute to assisting in the war effort.”

Like my father, many contractors are middle-aged with families and serious obligations. Most would never have been allowed to enlist in the military after 9/11. Many truck drivers, engineers, and logisticians jumped at the chance to do their part for their country. My father and his colleagues cringe at the suggestion that they are in Iraq solely to make money. He told me he wished America understood that “the contractor loses personnel at the same ratio as the military and is subject to the same indirect fire and improved explosive device warfare as the military.” For him at least, being a civilian contractor is about a lot more than dollar signs- it’s about continuing to serve.


Many opponents of civilian contractors will say that there is an inherent conflict of interest in American business profiting from wars that our government begins. However my father contends, and I now agree, that a distinction exists when profit made is the result of work requested by the government. “Companies provide a service at the request of the government and expect to be compensated for their services. Just like you expect a salary from an employer when you work for him and there is no conflict of interest.” What civilian contractors are profiting from is simply the inability of the American military and government to meet all obligations during war. Combat operations require a tremendous amount of resource allocation— all of which is strategically disadvantageous for any military to provide in its entirety. Thus, in the greater context of warfighting, civilian contracting is a vital source of support for the military, that is as long as our country intends to maintain its military at current size and fight wars of the current scale.


As we left the pub and walked through the streets of the European city we were visiting, my father and I discussed the upcoming election and our hopes for the country that both of us have had the privilege to serve. I asked him if he thought the war effort has benefited from contractors. He told me that it assuredly has because at the end of the day civilian contractors allow the military to focus on combat operations and there are fewer soldiers responsible for menial tasks.

Finally, I asked him what it was like to be a Vietnam veteran contracting in this war. He told me: “Other than not wearing the uniform and not having to engage [fight] on the military side, not much. It is very similar.”

In his mind, he's still serving his country.

“I want you to have a bias for action,” one of my basic school instructors told our class of boot lieutenants. “When there’s not enough information to make a great decision, I want you to make a good one. When there’s not enough for a good one, I want you to make any decision. Indecision kills.”

Marine training was life altering. I learned to go full speed or expect to die. I became accustomed to having my flaws and strengths visible to everyone. I learned how to associate a purpose and intent with everything I did, and explain it in as few words and pictures as possible. In short, I became a thick-skinned, order-interpreting, order-executing, and order-giving machine. I was incapable of sitting still if there was something to do.

After getting to the fleet, it didn’t take me long to start putting what I’d been taught to practice. But really, it was the four years of cultural transformation that had turned me from an easy-going, non-confrontational kid into a quick reacting, millisecond-managing, booming voice authoritarian. I wasn’t the same person anymore, and I’m sure I never will be again.


Every leader has his or her own style. The style I developed was to bulldoze. I’d try to win my troops’ confidence by showing a high level of expectation, capability, and strength early on. Whether or not they were impressed was irrelevant- soon I’d begin imposing my standards of excellence on them and demanding they perform at usually one pay grade above their actual ranks- I also made it a point to empower them so they had the authority to go with the higher standards. Then I would methodically begin piling more and more work onto our unit until I thought we had reached capacity, and then add a little more.

My style developed this way in large part because the Marine Corps taught me to never be satisfied. The Marine ethos stated that I would keep improving my fighting hole until I received the order to fill it in; to keep training until I was hitting center mass with every round even if I could make high scores without doing so. I lived this philosophy in every aspect of my life- from my bulldozer leadership style, to the gym, to the way I wore my uniform.


The things I was taught to do would make most civilians, and some members of the sister services, cringe. I’m not talking about the usual party tricks: drill instructors screaming, sleep deprivation, the cold, the lack of food and sanitation, or even sleeping through mortar attacks. I’m talking about becoming the opportunistic killer I was willingly molded into.

When I talked to my battalion intelligence chief before my first convoy in Iraq, after he had told me where the recent IED action was, only one question came to my mind: Who can I kill? Fallujah was an asymmetric battle: the bad guys knew who I was and where to find me but the opposite wasn’t true. I was sick of the mortars and rockets, sick of being on the sidelines. Could I kill anyone with a weapon, out of uniform? How about cell phones? How about men digging holes on the side of the road?

What you learn in the Marine Corps is that you are only as successful as the number of opportunities you exploit, and therefore the number of opportunities you can identify. Likewise, you are only as safe as the problems you can solve, and therefore the ones you can uncover. As with everything, there’s a certain amount of luck involved in warfare, but the minute you put success or failure into fate’s hands you cease to be a leader. I had no intention of leaving a guy burying a bomb in the dirt alive for the next convoy to pass behind me.


About a year after I had got out of the Marine Corps and was living back in New York, my friend found the three-inch Spyderco knife I kept under my belt. “What is this?” she asked, concerned, but amused. Embarrassed, I put it in my pocket and told her to forget about it- “old habits,” I excused myself. But to me it made perfect sense. I wasn’t taught to fire warning shots. If some thug pulled a weapon on me, he intended to kill me. I would kill him first. This was a problem I could solve. End of story.


For the last three years, I’ve been telling myself that one day I’ll be able to learn the collective leadership model practiced by so many civilian partnerships like the one I’m trying to start with some of my grad school peers. That I'd be able to resist the urge to take charge of every leadership vacuum I came across and that I’d learn how to build consensus diplomatically, keeping my opinion to myself. That I'd even learn how to let an opportunity pass by.

One day, maybe, but not yet.