Rural Soldiers. Forever Wars.

On 9/11/2001, I stood in front of my television watching the Twin Towers fall while holding my heavily pregnant belly. I cried watching the smoke roll out of the Pentagon while my son kicked my ribs. I felt a wave of nausea when I heard the news of the plane going down in a Pennsylvania field.

My son was born 90 days after the attacks. I brought him home to our Arkansas farm.

I sobbed, knowing my youngest son was entering a different world than his older brother. The post 9/11 world was coming into focus, and this baby would live a different reality. He would never know the safety we felt prior to the attacks.

He would never know a world without the threat of planes used as weapons of mass destruction.

That baby boy grew up to be a soldier. An officer in the Army National Guard. He also has a wife and a sweet baby of his own now.

I am incredibly scared for him under this regime.

Officer Graduation Ceremony, South Dakota.

We are a military family, but it’s not because we are any more patriotic than any other family. It’s because the military offers folks in lower tax brackets a way up. A way out.

Poverty makes basic training look easy and attractive…three hot meals and a bed and structure and stability and maybe even an education.

Pew Research states, “There are more than 18 million living veterans in the United States, representing about 6% of the country’s adult population. A very small percentage of the overall population.

But even more fascinating, the Armed Services are disproportionately staffed from rural spaces. Rural people make up anywhere from 14% to 20% of the country’s population, but some reports have cited that up to 44% of new enlistees in certain years came from rural areas.

Why?

Family farms are nearly a thing of the past, and rural spaces lack job opportunities. Rural people are more likely to live in poverty, and fewer rural students attend college than their urban counterparts.

Military recruiters often visit our rural public schools, and the idea of joining the military is planted into our children’s heads very early.

My grandpa left his Arkansas farm because he was going to be drafted into the Korean War. He joined the Navy as a medic. After the war, he was able to attend college and ended up in Kansas City working in a medical science lab downtown.

A very good job for a farm boy.

Three of my uncles were also drafted into the Korean War. They all left the farm and went into professional fields following the war. My mom still has uniforms hanging in an old closet.

My dad was only 18 when he found out my mom was pregnant with me. Daddy needed a job and signed up for the Navy. He became a Seabee. That service gave him the experience he needed to work in construction fields the rest of his life.

My youngest son joined because he needed a way to pay for college. I was a teacher. My husband was a teacher. We had no money to put back for college for our kids. Of our two kids who have already completed college, one had his body beaten and broken for five years playing college football for his tuition, and the other carries a rifle for the US Army.

It’s not the worst way to earn a college degree or a life skill, but it does come with inherent danger, and that’s just the way it goes for folks like us. At the end of the day, I’m not sure a college education or job prep should cost your life…

My dad’s Naval graduation picture, 1975.

I am thinking about this new Trump war hourly. I can’t stop thinking about this war and the inept and inadequate Trump appointees we have in charge at every level of the regime.

I am terrified of the consequences of a draft-dodging grifter starting another forever war.

Trump is immoral and transactional…a sociopath. He thinks in terms of money and access. He will do anything to gain both, including bombing a school for girls and starting a war that has already killed at least six American soldiers.

On American deaths, I watched Trump speak last Sunday and state: “We have three, but we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”

A great deal for the world…

The Secretary of “War” may have had an even worse take on our dead soldiers. Pete Hegseth complained, "When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad.”

The drones “got through” and killed American troops, and Pete’s claim that the press only wants to make Trump look bad by reporting on American deaths nearly took my breath away in its callousness. He is incapable of meeting the moment. He doesn’t care about service members or their families. They are props in an unconstitutional war.

But the most horrific scene was set yesterday when the bodies of the fallen men and women were returned to US soil in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. As the flag-draped coffins were received in a ceremony called The Dignified Transfer, Trump brought his hand to his head in a salute, while wearing a white baseball cap that is for sale on his MAGA website, The Trump Store.

The ritual that returns the remains of U.S. service members killed in action is considered one of the most somber duties of any Commander in Chief, and Trump wore his own merchandise. Trump promoted sales of his hat while overseeing the transfer of the bodies of American soldiers who died in his illegal war.

Trump’s stunt received so much backlash, that as of this morning, Fox News is running old footage of a previous dignified transfer to save face.

Several of the soldiers killed in Kuwait were from small towns in Iowa and Nebraska and Minnesota. They are my people. They are from the farms and the cornfields and of the Midwest.

They should be alive.

We should not be in another forever war because the Trump regime needs a war to stay in power. The young people from the farms and fields shouldn’t be cannon fodder for a demented grifter. A senile fool. A warmonger.

No human life should be currency for a regime. No soldier should be sent to fight for profit and power.

It’s the same old song — the poor sent to a war started by the wealthy. The rural folks to the front of the line. The fortunate sons in power to preside over the not-so-fortunate from the farms and fields.

Rinse. Repeat.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord.

~Jess

In memory of the fallen:

Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida

Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska

Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa

Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California