Let me be stereotypical for a minute.

I have no love for military wives who blindly defend their husbands' work, as if since he does it, it must be good.  I served in the Army, and I know that a great percentage of what our troops are used for is definitely not good.  I think everyone needs to open their eyes to that.  It's Memorial Day weekend, and everyone feels obligated to put in their two cents about the military, so I see a lot of stuff.  Some of it gets cool points, like when people acknowledge that female troops exist by saying something like, "Take this weekend to remember all our men and women in the military who have made the ultimate sacrifice." Some of it is sweet.  Some is cliche. Some of it is thought provoking.  For the first time today, I encountered something that kind of pissed me off.  Here it is:

If you can't see that, it's a dead Iraqi child, and it says "Memorial Day, Take this day to remember all the innocent children killed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles."

OK, so obviously, as the wife of someone who's been in the UAV program practically since its inception as far as light UAV's for brigade level use are concerned anyway, this really pissed me off.  I'm not one to be overly sensitive about Thak's work.  We don't believe the war in Iraq ever should have happened, and we do not believe that the war in Afghanistan was necessary either, and certainly not for this long.  We are pretty solidly anti-war.  We are NOT the war mongering pieces of trash that a lot of people think we would be. 

More importantly than that, my husband is not a baby killer.  In fact, if he were to count how many lives he has saved by keeping his UAV's flying, it would be an impossible task.  His planes do surveillance missions.  They find the actual bad guys, the ones who are packing cars full of explosives, or standing on a rooftop with an AK-47 about to light up a marketplace, or burying a bomb in the sand by the side of the road.  Then the commanders on the ground can use that information to coordinate strategic force on those people only.  Do you have any idea how much less collateral damage there is this way than if you sent a platoon of grunts to patrol a village and see what they found?!  I'm not hating on grunts. They have their place.  Their place is a lot better defined with the help of UAV surveillance.

Yes, I am aware that some UAV's are armed with weapons platforms.  That is a big development that has happened since Thak was selected for the UAV program.  Since he does not work with that type of UAV's, that is not something I am going to speak on much.  I will say, though, that it has its place, and sometimes, as crazy as this may sound, there is a lot less collateral damage by doing an aerial strike than there is by sending a ground unit in.  The alternative is to let the terrorists capture innocent people, set up bombs, and place snipers wherever they want.  That's what they do, and that's what they will do until we leave.  (Yes, I believe we should leave.  Last I checked, the folks in DC didn't ask me what I thought of it, though.) 

We have a choice here.  We can either hear an OCCASIONAL report of a UAV strike that missed, and had some awful consequence, or we can hear daily of whole platoons of US troops blown up while entire villages of innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire.  Which would you rather hear about? 

I sleep well at night knowing my husband does good work.  I am proud that he is in the UAV program, and that he IS the eyes in the sky, and SAVING people's lives.  Note that I did not say *American* lives.  That's because he saved more Iraqis than he did Americans during his 3 tours there.  We may not agree with that war or think it ever should have happened, but being in the UAV program, he did good work, and anyone who thinks the UAV program has made things worse obviously has not heard much about what it was like to fight without it in Vietnam.  Think about it.