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I'm excited to be here to speak about vets,
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because I didn't join the army
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because I wanted to go to war.
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I didn't join the army because I had a lust
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or a need to go overseas and fight.
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Frankly, I joined the army because
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college is really damned expensive,
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and they were going to help with that,
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and I joined the army because
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it was what I knew,
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and it was what I knew that I thought I could do well.
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I didn't come from a military family.
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I'm not a military brat.
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No one in my family ever
had joined the military at all,
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and how I first got introduced to the military
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was when I was 13 years old
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and I got sent away to military school,
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because my mother had been threatening me
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with this idea of military school
ever since I was eight years old.
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I some issues when I was coming up,
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and my mother would always tell me, she's like,
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"You know, if you don't get this together,
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I'm going to send you to military school."
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And I'd look at her, and I'd say, "Mommy,
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I'll work harder."
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And then when I was nine years old,
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she started giving me brochures
to show me she wasn't playing around,
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so I'd look at the brochures, and I'm like,
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"Okay, mommy, I can see you're
serious, and I'll work harder."
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And then when I was 10 and 11,
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my behavior just kept on getting worse.
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I was on academic and disciplinary probation
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before I hit double digits,
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and I first felt handcuffs on my wrists
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when I was 11 years old.
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And so when I was 13 years old,
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my mother came up to me, and she was like,
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"I'm not going to do this anymore.
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I'm going to send you to military school."
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And I looked at her, and I said, "Mommy,
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I can see you're upset, and
I'm going to work harder."
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And she's like, "No, you're going next week."
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And that was how I first got introduced
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to this whole idea of the military,
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because she thought this was a good idea.
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I had to disagree with her wholeheartedly
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when I first showed up there,
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because literally in the first four days,
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I had already run away five times from this school.
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They had these big black gates
that surrounded the school,
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and every time they would turn their backs,
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I would just simply run out of the black gates
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and take them up on their offer
that if we don't want to be there,
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we can leave at any time.
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So I just said, "Well, if that's the case,
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then I'd like to leave." (Laughter)
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And it never worked.
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And I kept on getting lost.
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But then eventually,
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after staying there for a little while,
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and after the end of that first year
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at this military school,
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I realized that I actually was growing up.
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I realized the things that I enjoyed about this school
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and the thing that I enjoyed about the structure
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was something that I'd never found before:
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the fact that I finally felt like I
was part of something bigger,
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part of a team, and it actually mattered to people
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that I was there;
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the fact that leadership wasn't just a punchline there
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but it was a real, actually core part
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of the entire experience.
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And so when it was time for me to actually
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finish up high school,
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I started thinking about what I wanted to do,
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and just like probably most students,
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had no idea what that meant or what I wanted to do.
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And I thought about the people who I
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respected and admired.
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I thought about a lot of the people,
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in particular a lot of the men, in my life,
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who I looked up to.
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They all happened to wear the uniform
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of the United States of America,
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so for me, the question and the answer
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really became pretty easy.
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The question of what I wanted to do
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was filled in very quickly with saying,
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I guess I'll be an army officer.
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So the army then went through this process
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and they trained me up,
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and when I say I didn't join the army
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because I wanted to go to war,
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the truth is, I joined in 1996.
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There really wasn't a whole lot going on.
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I didn't ever feel like I was in danger.
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When I went to my mom,
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I first joined the army when I was 17 years old,
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so I literally needed parental permission
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to join the army,
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so I kind of gave the paperwork to my mom,
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and she just assumed it was
kind of like military school.
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She was like, "Well, it was good for him before,
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so I guess I'll just let him keep doing it,"
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having no idea that the
paperwork that she was signing
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was actually signing her son up
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to become an army officer.
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And I went through the process,
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and again the whole time still just thinking,
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this is great, maybe I'll serve on a weekend,
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or two weeks during the year, do drill,
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and then a couple years after I signed up,
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a couple years after my mother signed those papers,
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the whole world changed.
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And after 9/11, there was an entirely new context
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about the occupation that I chose.
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When I first joined, I never joined to fight,
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but now that I was in,
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this is exactly what was now going to happen.
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And I thought about so much about the soldiers
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who I eventually had to end up leading.
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I remember when we first, right after 9/11,
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three weeks after 9/11, I was
on a plane heading overseas,
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but I wasn't heading overseas with the military,
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I was heading overseas because I got a scholarship
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to go overseas.
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I received the scholarship to go overseas
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and to go study and live overseas,
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and I was living in England and that was interesting,
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but at the same time, the same people who
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I was training with,
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the same soldiers that I went
through all my training with,
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and we prepared for war,
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they were now actually heading over to it.
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They were now about to find themselves
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in the middle of places the fact is
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the vast majority of people,
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the vast majority of us as we were training,
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couldn't even point out on a map.
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I spent a couple years finishing graduate school,
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and the whole entire time while I'm sitting there
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in buildings at Oxford
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that were literally built hundreds of years
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before the United States was even founded,
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and I'm sitting there talking to dons
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about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand,
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and how that influenced the start of World War I,
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where the entire time my heart and my head
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were on my soldiers
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who were now throwing on Kevlars
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and grabbing their flak vests
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and figuring out how exactly do I change around
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or how exactly do I clean a machine gun
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in the darkness.
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That was the new reality.
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By the time I finished that up and I rejoined,
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my military unit were getting
ready to deploy to Afghanistan.
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There were soldiers in my unit who were now
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on their second and third deployments
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before I even had my first.
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I remember walking out with
my unit for the first time,
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and when you join the army
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and you go through a combat tour,
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everyone looks at your shoulder,
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because on your shoulder is your combat patch.
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And so immediately as you meet people
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and you shake their hand,
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and then your eyes go to their shoulder,
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because you want to see where did they serve,
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and what unit did they serve with?
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And I was the only person walking around
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with a bare shoulder,
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and it burned every time someone stared at it.
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But you get a chance to talk to your soldiers,
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and you ask them why did they sign up.
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I signed up because college was expensive.
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A lot of my soldiers signed up
for completely different reasons.
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They signed up because of a sense of obligation.
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They signed up because they were angry
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and they wanted to do something about it.
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They signed up because
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their family said this was important.
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They signed up because they
wanted some form of revenge.
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They signed for a whole
collection of different reasons.
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And now we all found ourselves overseas
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fighting in these conflicts.
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And what was amazing to me was that I
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very naively started hearing this statement
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that I never fully understood,
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because right after 9/11, you start hearing this idea
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where people come up to you and they say,
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"Well, thank you for your service."
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And I just kind of followed in and started saying
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the same things to all of my soldiers.
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This is even before I deployed.
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But I really had no idea what that even meant.
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I just said it because it sounded right.
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I said it because it sounded like the right thing to say
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to people who had served overseas.
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"Thank you for your service."
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But I had no idea what the context was
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or what that even,
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what it even meant to people who heard it.
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When I first came back from Afghanistan,
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I thought that if you make it back from conflict,
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then the dangers were all over.
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I thought that if you made it
back from a conflict zone,
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then somehow you could kind of
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wipe the sweat off your brow and say,
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"Whew, I'm glad I dodged that one,"
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without understanding that for so many people,
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as they come back home,
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the war keeps going.
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It keeps playing out in all of our minds.
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It plays out in all of our memories.
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It plays out in all of our emotions.
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Please forgive us
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if we don't like being in big crowds.
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Please forgive us
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when we spend one week in a place
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that has 100 percent light discipline,
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because you're not allowed to
walk around with white lights,
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because if anything has a white light,
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it can be seen from miles away,
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whereas if you use little green
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or little blue lights,
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they cannot be seen from far away.
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So please forgive us if out of nowhere,
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we go from having 100 percent light discipline
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to then a week later being back
in the middle of Times Square,
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and we have a difficult time adjusting to that.
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Please forgive us
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when you transition back to a family
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that has completely been maneuvering without you,
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and now when you come back, it's not that easy
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to fall back into a sense of normality,
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because the whole normal has changed.
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I remember when I came back,
I wanted to talk to people.
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I wanted people to ask me about my experiences.
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I wanted people to come up to me and tell me,
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"What did you do?"
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I wanted people to come up to me and tell me,
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"What was it like? What was the food like?
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What was the experience like? How are you doing?"
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And the only questions I got from people was,
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"Did you shoot anybody?"
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And those were the ones who were even curious
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enough to say anything?
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Because sometimes there's this fear
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and there's this apprehension that if I say anything,
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I'm afraid I'll offend,
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or I'm afraid I'll trigger something,
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so the common default is just saying nothing.
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The problem with that
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is then it feels like your service
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was not even acknowledged,
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like no one even cared.
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"Thank you for your service,"
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and we move on.
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What I wanted to better understand
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was what's behind that,
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and why "Thank you for your service" isn't enough.
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The fact is, we have literally
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2.6 million men and women
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who are veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan
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who are all amongst us.
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Sometimes we know who they are,
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sometimes we don't,
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but there is that feeling, the shared experience,
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the shared bond
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where we know that that experience
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and that chapter of our life,
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while it might be closed,
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it's still not over.
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We think about "Thank you for your service,"
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and people say, "So what does 'Thank
you for your service' mean to you?"
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Well, "Thank you for your service" means to me,
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it means acknowledging our stories,
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asking us who we are,
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understanding the strength
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that so many people, so many
people who we serve with, have,
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and why that service means so much.
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"Thank you for your service"
means acknowledging the fact
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that just because we've now come home
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and we've taken off the uniform
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does not mean that our larger service to this country
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is somehow over.
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The fact is, there's still a tremendous amount
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that can be offered and can be given.
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When I look at people
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like our friend Taylor Urruela,
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who in Iraq loses his leg,
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had two big dreams in his life.
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One was to be a soldier. The other
was to be a baseball player.
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He loses his leg in Iraq.
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He comes back
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and instead of deciding that,
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"Well now since I've lost my
leg, that second dream is over,"
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he decides that he still has that
dream of playing baseball,
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and he starts this group called VETSports,
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which now works with veterans all over the country
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and uses sports as a way of healing.
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People like Tammy Duckworth,
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who was a helicopter pilot
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and with the helicopter that she was flying,
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you need to use both your hands
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and also your legs to steer,
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and her helicopter gets hit,
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and she's trying to steer the chopper,
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but the chopper's not reacting
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to her instructions and to her commands.
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She's trying to land the chopper safely,
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but the chopper doesn't land safely,
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and the reason it's not landing safely
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is because it's not responding to the
commands that her legs are giving
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because her legs were blown off.
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She barely survives.
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Medics come and they save her life,
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but then as she's doing her
recuperation back at home,
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she realizes that, "My job's still not done."
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And now she uses her voice
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as a Congresswoman from Illinois
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to fight and advocate for a collection of issues
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to include veterans issues.
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We signed up because
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we love this country we represent.
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We signed up because
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we believe in the idea and we believe in the people
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to our left and to our right.
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And the only thing we then ask is that
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"thank you for your service"
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needs to be more than just a quote-breaker,
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that "thank you for your service" means
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honestly digging in
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to the people who have stepped up
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simply because they were asked to,
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and what that means for us not just now,
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not just during combat operations,
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but long after the last vehicle has left
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and after the last shot has been taken.
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These are the people who I served with,
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and these are the people who I honor.
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So thank you for your service.
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(Applause)