No denying it

It is almost impossible to overstate the degree of cultural difference between Iceland and the United States generated by the simple fact that the U.S. has a military, and Iceland does not. One reason I prefer living in Reykjanesbær is that I feel less of a need to apologize for that fact here than I would elsewhere in Iceland. Because as it so happens, I would not exist, I would never have been born, were it not for the U.S. Military. This does not mean for one minute that I support everything they have done or everything they are doing. But it does mean that I tend to see the military not as an abstraction, the evil "military industrial complex," but rather as an organization made up of individuals, with all the good and bad incumbent in any human endeavor. With the power to obliterate whole nations comes the responsibility not to do so, and I like to believe they (usually) know that. Not that I'm trying to apologize for them, or anything.  

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