By Sarah Olson
t r u t h o u t | Report
Tuesday 24 April 2007
Jeff Slocum is a 41-year-old chief master sergeant in the United States Air Force. He's spent the last 21 years in the military and has been stationed in Europe, Korea, Honduras and the Middle East. He's now an engineer at Pope Air Force Base near Fayetteville, North Carolina. He loves his work, has enormous faith in the military and believes in serving his country. Until recently, he planned to spend his entire life in military service. But the events in Iraq have forced Slocum to question the viability of that plan and ultimately to change his life course.
"First and foremost, we should never have gone into Iraq," says Slocum, sitting in a cafe in Fayetteville, a town filled with unbelievably picturesque fountains and a central square that, before it housed restaurants and a coffee shop with wireless internet access, was home to the area's slave auction. "I felt betrayed by the commanders who said they'd find a way to make this war work, when they knew it wasn't practical. This was a betrayal of the men and women who are fighting in Iraq."
Slocum says he used to rely on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for information. He thought President Bush was "folksy and sincere" and voted for him in 2004. But even when Slocum was stationed at a NATO office in Europe during the build-up to the Iraq war, he says he could feel a palpable shift in attitudes towards the US after the invasion of Iraq. He says he felt his country was betraying the trust and good will of the rest of the world. After seeing such scorn in the eyes of his colleagues, he began to question the US decision to invade Iraq.
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