opinion Jason Hoffman [email protected] Published 12:23 PM EST Nov 9, 2018 West Price Hill resident Jason M. Hoffman is a Marine Corps veteran of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. He is the sports editor for Cincinnati.com. Reach him by email at [email protected] or join the conversation on Twitter: @JHoffInCincy. This column originally ran Nov. 11, 2015. Four times since transitioning out of the U.S. Marine Corps, I’ve been notified one of my former brothers in arms ended their own lives. You don’t need to thank me for my service. I never did anything to keep an invading force from taking over Cincinnati. I didn’t fight to ensure your right to free speech. You still have the right to vote regardless of successes and failures of the battlefields in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It’s OK to admit your modern military is focused on being a police force serving the policy initiatives of elected officials. That’s our new reality. I’d prefer you help ensure my brothers and sisters in arms get off the streets and stay alive. We all swore an oath, it’s just a shame the favor hasn’t been returned. The wars and subsequent nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan were an asymmetrical fight. The enemy didn’t wear a traditional uniform or follow standard rules of conflict. It could have been any man, woman or child on the streets. Objectives weren’t measured in land taken but rather the change effected on a population. A widely circulated statistic that 22… [Read full story]
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