Why Am I Here essay contest

This was perfect then and is perfect now.

"I’d rather be a soldier, an active participant against such a cruel enemy, than a critic who enjoys the flavors of American life but isn’t willing to put on a uniform".

There is the heart of your essay. You are "in the arena".

Thank-you always and God bless.

The editor in me has one nitpick. I think you mean "Ergo" (therefore) not "Ergot" (a rye fungus). Your spellchecker got a tad over enthusiastic?

Other than that, Word, brother, the very word.

K - Mother of a Marine

Wow, I loved it...I can see why you won. Thanks for sharing your feelings...and know that you'll have my prayers. Stay safe...

Thank you Karla. Yes, I meant ergo, not the rye fungus. Good eye.

I loved reading your essay and wondered if it would be okay with you if I shared it on my milsupport blog with a link back to your blogsite? You can email me at the above address and let me know. I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks so much!!! Take care!

Lieutenant K. What an essay,you deserved to win.We love you,and you are in our prayers.Stay safe .

• Farfar and Farmor F.

Just found your blog. LOVED your essay, no wonder you won. It's really well written and I think it expresses the reasons why soldier do what they do. Hopefully more people will get a chance to read it and finally understand why it is that the troops risk their lives day in and day out. I'm a military wife so I support all of the troops 100%.

Will keep you in my prayers. Stay safe and God Bless!

Thank you so much for serving our country. That was beautifully written.

Again a masterpiece. Congratulations for the prize, you deserve it !

As you know now how i feel about you and all the Americans over there in Iraq, as you know how very grateful i am to you, and how much i admire your courage, i feel free to developp two absurd demonstrations. Feel free yourself to hate me along the reading !

First one : You re in iraq because you re a fool.

Vigny said : "Writer, hit your heart with two fists : it is only there that your talent is !". The beauty of "Why i am here" doesn t come from the rationality of your explanation, but from the passion that is showing through your words.

It appears to be a very reasonable mathematical demonstration. But if it was, you would NOT have touched any single heart, and then you would not have won. Through your apparently well organized argumentation, one can have a glimpse of the passion that pushed you to go to iraq. Love for your country, love for your kids, desire to contribute to a better world, hatred for undemocratic dictatorships, for terrorism, for lack of freedom, these are respected values that we share, but you do believe in them more than the average man.

"This is my worst punishment : Without love, without hatred, My heart's bored, My heart cries !" Verlaine (French poet)

You believe so passionately in these values, to the point of going to the other end of the world and of putting your life at great risks, which is not the natural behaviour of the average specimen of the human specie.

Scientists of Rutgers University (New York City) have studied the biochemical pathways of passion. It turns out that people experiencing passion have a chemical profile in their brain similar to that of people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Passion, it seems, lights up certain areas of the brain, and releases chemicals that provoke hyperactivity, recklessness and exhilaration.Passion blurs the line between mental health and psychopathology. Passion and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart.

Hence you re in iraq because you re a fool.

Second one : you re in iraq because you have no freedom of thought.

When a termitary is attacked by a predator, the termites which are soldiers go out. All the entries are then blocked from the inside by the builders. The soldiers termites have no way to get back in. They sacrifice themselves for the ones inside.

When a beehive is attacked, the bees go out, sting, and sacrifice themselves for the ones inside.

Can termites and bees be seen as behaving heroically ?

No for two reasons :

- First, they don t know they are gonna die. They don t know they are mortal.

But Man has been given self consciousness, and its terrible downside : he knows he s gonna die. He s aware of the shortness of life and of the fact that one day his time on earth will come to an end.

In this light you are behaving heroically because you re self conscious.

- Second, termites and bees are genetically programmed. Their behaviour is written in advance in their DNA. They don t have the choice between going out to fight or staying safely inside.

But Man has free agency. He thinks and makes decisions and acts.

In this light you are behaving heroically because you were given the choice.

OR WERE YOU ?

You were not born with the ability to make a decision.

You have been educated. All along your childhood and youth, ideas and behavioural attitudes have impregnated the conscious and unconscious parts of your memory. You ve been taught the good from the bad, the right from the wrong.

And if you disobey the values imposed to you, you feel so guilty and at war with your inner self that it creates great anguish and suffering. Whatever the suffering in iraq, it s easier to bear than the suffering of being in conflict with the image that your parents (or other adults, society, culture) wanted you to correspond to.

When facing a dilemma and then when ending with this decision, are you the one making it or have you been trained and programmed to make this very decision ?

Take this iraqi guy who s just about to willingly blow him up in a kamikaze terrorist act. Let s go back to the day he was born and to the day you were born. Let s make an exchange : he s sent in your family from the very first second of his life, you re sent in his family from the very first second of your life. Thirty four years later, were are you, both of you ? Who s carrying the bomb, who s wearing the American cammo uniform ?

Aren t you then a pure product of your cultural social class ?

You were not genetically programmed, but you were programmed by your society and education and all the influences that have been pushed into your brain from your early hours.

Then you re in iraq because you have no freedom of thought.

To link the two demonstrations, to stress a little bit more their absurdity, let me mix up things by adding that the word "passion" comes from the ancient latin word "passio" which means suffering.

Are you that passionate about your values to avoid the suffering of rejection from your society ? (This is so far fetched that you can easily understand it s a joke !)

Don t hate me anymore, i m done with the stupid demonstrations !

Take them as compliments for your work : i admit i m just trying to be original here to impress the great writer you are !

And perhaps i m being faithful to what my own culture has programmed me to be . Passionately trying to find flaws in the demonstration of a prize winner, ain t I a pure product of the french revolution ?

Thank you for your writing.

Take great care.

Love from francoise.

Lt.K. Thank you for your service to our country. A well thought out, and well written essay. Thank you for fighting so that we can sleep safely in our beds at night, go to work in the morning and live our lives in peace and safety. May God bless you richly, although I believe he already has. God bless America.

Dear Lee,

I've read "Fighting With Honor" today. I need to apologize for the comment on your prize winning essay. I sincerely apologize to you. I'm very sorry. I just wanted to have some fun, i now realize how NOT funny i was, and how much stupid and vain i was. Please forgive me.

Love from francoise