I’m confused.

Let me make a few things clear before I go on: I identify as liberal (surprise, the college-age white girl is a liberal). I believe sexuality isn’t something that should be debated and that love is love. I believe women have abundant reproductive, social, economic and political rights that they are too often denied (not necessarily in America but in various countries). I believe civil rights is still something we, as a society, need to focus on. I believe in peace, as idealistic and unrealistic as that is. You get the drill.

The political parties of today can't be compared to those of the past, and we can't view history through a modern lens. American foreign policy has drastically changed over the course of our nation (you can read more about that here and here as I don’t want this article to turn into a summary of someone else’s ideas).

Foreign policy, those two words, sounds self-explanatory, and it almost is. We need policies, ideas and plans to interact and relate with other foreign nations. We base these policies off of national interests, as the first linked article, “America’s Foreign Policy: A Brief History,” states. I won’t delve too deeply into all that jazz because that’s for an entirely different article, but foreign policy does play an important role in both interactions with other nations and the domestic sphere.

These interactions with other nations vary. Too often, the world falls apart. Too often, war becomes a necessary evil in our society. It’s a sad truth and something I don’t think civilization will ever be able to control. It’s very hard to argue against the necessity of war when terrible people commit atrocities against humanity. There’s an implied moral obligation there that is difficult to ignore.

The U.S. engages, and has engaged, in diverse and capricious conflicts – we’ve been trying to make the world safe for democracy since Wilson was in office.

And I don’t say that facetiously because the world is an entirely unsafe place for so many reasons, ranging from unclean water to terrorism, but that doesn’t always mean democracy will make it safer. Because something works for us doesn’t mean it will work for a different group of people.

That being said, when a war becomes a necessity, as sick as it is to say that, why do people who aren’t fighting the war make 90 percent of the decisions that dictate who lives and who dies? Contentious and polarizing, foreign policy and all things military-related clearly won’t always end in peace, so when put in a position to fight a war, why not let the people who are highly trained do what they were trained to do?

It bothers me that politicians, some of whom have little to no experience with malicious foreign powers, get to decide how the men and women fighting for this country react and respond to danger. It bothers me that we call the people we train to protect our domestic lives into question. It bothers me that, in a landscape turned battlefield, these soldiers are tripping over rules, regulations and gray areas.

I can't speak to the dangers of a war. I've never personally experienced one. But isn't it general knowledge that the psychological effects of such an environment aren't typically, well, positive? And who's to say anyone besides the person in that situation can know what to do?

Are the rules important? Yes, rules are important, but when rules become dangerous restrictions, isn’t that a bit frightening? War isn’t black and white. Life and death, totally not black and white.

I understand – civilian life is a cause for concern. No one wants innocent people to die. No one wants to see images of dead children and families. Any decent human being knows how wrong and sad that is, especially when these people aren’t harming anyone.

I know protecting civilians overseas and during wartime situations doesn’t equate to saying the lives of our men do not matter, but really, when you think about it, if you subject these men to rules that essentially protect the wrong people while protecting the right people, you’re projecting a higher probability of casualties on the people who are voluntarily protecting your rights as an American citizen and as a world citizen.

Why does a man sitting in the safety of the States get to decide how a man sitting in the decidedly unsafe territory of a warzone protects himself and his family? I’m not saying shoot everyone. I’m not saying kill everyone and everything, but I feel like the guys over there understand a threat when a threat is present.

I don’t know. Maybe my confusion is unfounded. Maybe I’m too liberal to speak on this occasion. I just don’t understand the logic behind these things. We send people off to make the world safe for democracy and for unsubstantiated reasons decided by men in offices, but we send them off with tied hands.

My concern lies in what is deemed acceptable and what is not and by whom; my concern lies in the trust, or lack thereof, we place in our military; my concern lies in the façade of value we place on human life. We praise our heroes yet also degrade them and fail to care for them after the fact; we care about the foreign civilians until they need refuge, which is an entirely different topic for an entirely different article.

My concern lies in the future of these men and women we send to defend democracy or to teach civilians how to defend themselves or whatever – when do we focus on the fact that blurred lines are abundant, and there is no textbook way to handle something? There is no textbook way to fight a war on terror. There is no textbook way to fight a war.

I’m confused, and I’m concerned, and I wish war didn’t have to be a means of protecting a nation, but it is. War is hell, and war is beauty, and war is life. War is a paradox. Why do we have so many books and movies about it? Why is it happening everywhere? It isn’t going away.

I will never be for a war or for violence, and I’m not saying people who support wars are or whatever the opposing opinion might be, but I know I will always be for the people who fight it in hopes of protecting our nation and doing a service many would never even consider.

It’s sad that I have to sit down and think about the very many deaths, American or foreign, that span across history. It’s sad that we have to worry about a world where traveling is scary. It’s sad that we have to hear about suicide bombings plaguing Europe, the Middle East, Africa and various other locations. It’s sad that it has become a part of our very nature to have emergency plans because x amount of situations might occur, from foreign terrorism to school shootings.

But, it’s also sad that the people trying to right those wrongs in our world wake up unsure if they’ll have to face reprimands for preserving themselves and the men around them. It’s sad that they have to look death in the eye, for the sake of keeping our soil the land of the free and home of the brave and for the sake of helping those who cannot help themselves, and wonder if and how they can resolve the situation or at least escape the situation alive.

It’s not about politics, or it shouldn’t be about politics. You can’t debate with a terrorist or anyone who is on the attack for that matter. It’s about trust. It’s about life. It’s about respect. You can’t always predict how something is going to happen, and you definitely can't predict how to react to that incident. When someone has never been in the gray area, I don’t think he or she should be able to create a law or a rule that turns it into black and white resolutions.