Constitution Day, Sept. 17, often goes unrecognized but the freedoms it brings to U.S. citizens are never forgotten and are desired by many. This week, a Task Force Marne naturalized citizens reflected on her journey toward U.S. citizenship and what brought her back to the Middle East to help rebuild Iraq.

A critical member of Task Force Marne, Angel Hermiz, contributes her skills as a linguist to the USD-N command team, specifically for the USD-N Commanding General, Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, and also believes that her time spent advising American soldiers has been beneficial.

“Knowing the culture very well is what motivated me mostly to do the job, because I felt like I could be a great help to all of the soldiers,” said Hermiz. “When I would watch the television from 2003 to 2007, I heard many negative things, and most of it was related to mistranslation, or misadvised cultural issues. I felt like I could help with advising and I feel like I speak good English and Arabic. I feel like I do my best in both advising in the culture and the language.”

Hermiz is a Clinton Township, Mich., native, but is originally from Kirkuk, Iraq. She and her family spent some time in Baghdad before making the decision to finally move to the United States.

“My family and I came to the states in 1992,” she said. “We lived in two wars growing up in Iraq, one between Iran and Iraq, and the other being the first Gulf War. The economic sanctions affected my parents and their savings, so we pretty much lost everything. We had a great opportunity to leave Iraq and start somewhere else. So we made it to the U.S. and have been in Michigan since.”

Hermiz worked many jobs at the beginning of her stay in the States, due to the language barrier. She went to college to learn more about English, and landed a job at a civil engineering firm as an administrative assistant before becoming a linguist. The job of a linguist was being advertised everywhere, especially because there is a high number of Muslim communities in Michigan. When Hermiz saw the ads on television and in grocery stores, she knew she knew what she wanted tod do.

“When my firm started downsizing, unfortunately, I lost my job, so I was unemployed,” Hermiz said. “At first, I took this job for a financial reason. The pay was good and I speak both languages, but when I got here in Iraq, it was totally different. I look at it as a great mission, and I am proud to be here. As a linguist, the kinds of jobs we do are key leader engagements with the high-level personnel in Iraq, like high commanding generals.”

For Hermiz, the time she has spent and lived in country since beginning her job in 2008 has been enough to notice positive differences within the country and people of Iraq.

“I’ve noticed good things happening in Iraq since I was last here,” said Hermiz. “When I was living here, it was during Saddam’s regime. The people of Iraq didn’t have that much freedom of speech, becoming who they want to be. Everything back then was in the name of the government. Right now, I see the people becoming more and more like themselves.”

“It’s a great opportunity, I am thankful to be able to do this level of work because I get to work with unique individuals. It’s a great honor to work for a major general in the U.S. Army. For America, it’s the least I could give to the country that gave me and my Family freedom. The freedom to choose our way of living, freedom to practice our religion with no fear, freedom to speak our opinion with no fear and finally for the country that gave peace,” said Hermiz.

DVIDS
Story by Spc. Cassandra Monroe

Petty Officer 1st Class Tracy Roach (bottom right) sings Christmas carols with a group of service members aboard Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, Dec. 24, 2009. Roach was born in the small city of Adukrom Akwapin in Ghana, Africa, came to the U.S. just before she turned 17 and has been serving in the U.S. Navy for 13 years. Photo by Cpl. Meg Murray

If Petty Officer 1st Class Tracy Roach, a religious program specialist with United States Force – West, had never left her hometown, she would mostly likely be married with four or five children, sell small goods as a store keeper, or she may have even learned to sew and become a seamstress in her town.

This may not seem like the dream of the average American child, and it’s not, because Roach was born and raised in a small town called Adukrom Akwapin in Ghana, Africa.

“When I look back now, I was the happiest child in the midst of not having much,” Roach explained. “I was so happy because I had my grandmother, my aunt, the church and my friends I grew up with.”

Roach’s home did not have electricity or plumbing, so they relied on light from a small lamp and water from public water stations in town.

“We had a little kerosene lamp, and I’d wake up in the morning and have soot in my nose,” said Roach. “There were two water stations in the whole town of about 3,000 people … the line was always so long, and then sometimes the pipes wouldn’t have water for a month at a time, so you had to go to the streams to get water. We also drank rainwater that we caught in barrels.”

Though Roach was not afforded the comforts of running water or electricity, she did have the opportunity to attend school.

“You have to pay school fees from kindergarten on up, and if your family doesn’t have the money to pay, you would get whipped,” recalled Roach. “You got knocked on the head if you were late or if you missed your homework, but still, school was so much fun. It was a competition – from 1st grade all the way up to junior high. We didn’t say, ‘oh, you passed.’ It was ‘who was first, second, third?’ And they had you form a line by what number you were in front of the whole school, so you always tried to be first.”

Roach experienced the strict discipline of her school firsthand, not only because her family’s financial hardships, but also because of a habit she picked up from her grandmother, who raised her until she was 16.

“You get beat up for talking in class,” explained Roach. “The class leader would take down names of the people who talked, and my name was always on the list because I talked all the time. They would put my name up first and if I talked, they would mark it, and if I didn’t they would cancel it. I got it from my grandmother … she talked forever.”

But, as Roach learned, her grandmother did not talk just to hear her own voice. Roach’s grandmother learned that a good conversationalist holds the key to coping with hardships and passed her wisdom onto Roach.

“We didn’t have money. We didn’t have much,” said Roach. “There was a lot of talking and singing. You could talk your way out of hunger … talk your way out of anything. It was all smiles and laughter and singing and sleep. If you’re hungry, go to sleep, and now that I think about it, it worked.”

And hunger was something Roach and her family dealt with on a daily basis.

“We had a meal once a day, usually in the evening. There was no breakfast or lunch,” explained Roach. “We ate a lot of carbohydrates like cassava and plantains … it would be mixed into a food called ‘fufu,’ which was kind of like a paste, and you ate it with soup. But, chicken, beef and goat were expensive. They were rich people’s food, and so was rice. If me or my aunt got sick, my grandmother would go buy rice, but if you’re not sick, rice and meats were for occasions like Christmas and Easter.”

Just before Roach turned 17 years old, her life changed quickly and drastically. Her father, who was a citizen of America but born in Ghana, traveled to Ghana and brought Roach back to the United States with him. After a stop in the capital city of Accra, Ghana, Roach found herself in Washington state.

“It was a culture shock, but it didn’t faze me for some reason. I think I was numb with everything, coming from a house where you don’t have anything to a house where you have a bedroom to yourself; it was like, ‘wow, come on!’”

After completing her last few years of high school in the U.S., Roach made the decision to join the Navy.

“I never thought about going to college, because I knew there was no money to go, so two months before graduation, I walked into the recruiter’s office,” said Roach. “I said, ‘okay, four years to get the money for college and I’ll get out.’ But thirteen years later, I’m still in.”

In 2000, while Roach was in the military, she gained U.S. citizenship, and three years later, went back to Ghana to reunite with her family.

“It was very emotional to see my grandmother. She’s been sick ever since I’ve known her, and just to see her … she was sitting in a little corner … and she said, ‘is that you?’ She was talking to me [in her native language] – and I understood everything she said – but when I spoke back, it was with an accent, and they all laughed at me,” recalled Roach. “Everybody was looking at me differently, and that kind of hurt me a little bit. I didn’t want to be treated special; I was just like them.”

Though Roach has been in the U.S. for almost as many years as she lived in Ghana and now has a family of her own, she will never forget the lessons God and her grandmother taught her.

“Knowing God and the strength of my grandmother, who has never been through school, doesn’t know how to spell her name, and doesn’t know how to speak English, but was always smiling, always laughing … her wisdom and faith and hope in God is what has kept me alive. My grandmother used to say that you just have to smile at everything that comes your way, and smiling will conquer everything.”

DVIDS
Story by Cpl. Meg Murray

Will at Crescat Sententia responds to my post about his post about my post. Got that?

As Sasha Volokh points out, patriotism doesn’t always mean “my country right or wrong.” I mean, I’m glad there are lots of people who love the country so much that they’ll turn up to defend us against any assault. If you’re worried, I promise you can count on me to defend the country when required by law [firstly, because it will be required by law, secondly, because I think that on the whole this is a pretty good country]. You can even count on me to obey laws I disagree with (or at least most of them). You can even count on me to support the enforcement of laws I disagree with, or at least support their fair and just administration. You can count on me to uphold and defend justice and all that other great stuff.

But patriotism does sometimes mean “being negative, protesting, disrupting,” and even “wrecking”. When laws are injust (sic) and wrong, they should be protested, and wrecked (albeit in a legal manner). I have no intention of supporting marijuana laws if people ever go about overturning them in the proper way. And the oath doesn’t seem to make that sort of allowance– it doesn’t require me to defend laws only against “unlawful” enemies, or anything similar.

Look. Serious patriotism, serious “good citizenship” requires a certain degree of protesting, wrecking, and negativity, a certain quest for justice rather than a defense of the status quo. Indeed, it might even require a recognition of the right, maybe even the obligation to unlawfully rise up in certain circumstances, rather than stand blindly behind the country, come what may.

Being loyal to the United States has been perverted by the loony left to mean blind and unquestioned obedience, cult-style. Look, if you had a friend who told you that he was your friend forever, but constantly told you your every flaw, and made sure that you knew how little he thought of your character on a regular basis, would you really call him your friend?

Being a loyal American doesn’t mean looking for flaws at every turn, nor does it mean routinely and publicly protesting the flaws that you perceive. It does mean being a good citizen and using the process (which works very well) to change things that you disagree with. Defining your good citizenship by the degree to which you protest our government is disloyal. The government is your government. It’s your United States. Our political processes are at work every day and you are personally responsible for that. And the America that we have is due, by and large, to the efforts of all Americans within the political process. Should you find yourself on the losing side in the political debate, suck it up. That’s the way America works.

Loyalty to the United States used to mean fighting Nazis or arresting KKK members. Now, somehow, it has come to mean vomiting on the steps of Federal buildings, or waving your bare tits at news cameras. It’s become patriotic to smash Starbuck’s windows, to assault policemen doing their sworn duties, to obstruct other Americans and prevent them from peacefully going about their lawful business. It’s patriotic to deface other people’s property, to cost your fellow taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up after you, or prevent you from committing crimes against your fellow citizens and their property.

Just tell me how this “wrecking” behavior is patriotic? Society is counter-chaos. Adding to social chaos is not patriotic, nor a sign of loyalty to the United States.

I will support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic

Just what is your problem with that? It calls upon you to defend the United States against its enemies. That’s not cult-like, unthinking behavior. That’s a basic request by the society to its members. Help fight to preserve our society and what it stands for.

Those lucky few who get to voluntarily take the Oath have chosen to become American citizens. They have come, in many cases, from other nations where the freedoms that we enjoy are unknown. By this Oath, they are joining our society, and vowing that they will support and defend that which they have found here.

Will you defend the American way of life? Will you defend our political institutions, our Constitution, our political process? The next time September 11 occurs, which way will YOU run, towards the burning towers or away?

I first posted this on Monday, October 27, 2003. I am reposting it because Will at Crescat Sententia answered the question that I asked at the very end, How many natural born citizens would refuse to take this oath? He said that he would.

ORIGINAL POST:
In order to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must take an oath. If you are born a citizen, you do not. Somehow, I think the naturalized citizens are luckier. They get to profess their allegiance.

via many, here via Robert Prather

I hereby declare, an oath,

that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;

that I will support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law;

that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law;

that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law;

and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose or evasion: So help me God.

How many natural born citizens would refuse to take this oath?

Will objects, reflexively, to the use of the word God in the oath, but that isn’t his major malfunction here.

Think about that for a minute. To support the laws of the United States against all domestic enemies? I simply don’t, couldn’t, can hardly imagine. As anybody who’s been reading this blog knows, there are plenty of laws that I don’t support. Amidst the multi-faceted mish-mash of law in this country, I think that anybody that follows politics at all could find a law they don’t support, and have no intention of defending if, for example, some enemy of the law tried to repeal it in Congress.

The Is-Ought distinction has never been so blurred. No thanks.

We all cherry pick the laws that we obey. We speed, we fudge our taxes, we don’t pay sales tax on mailorder purchases. When Will says that there are plenty of laws that I don’t support he seems to be going in a different direction.

This is an oath of loyalty. Loyalty is a forgotten virtue in this day and age. The oath recognizes that there is a contract between the citizen and the nation, and that citizens owe something to their nation, not just the other way around. It also goes to the current lefty loon meme that patriotism means being negative, protesting, disrupting, wrecking. An oath of loyalty says to the oathtaker that you are vowing that you will support the country, through your labor and through your practices and beliefs. You are vowing to act in a positive way, for the good of the nation, and that you will set aside all former loyalties. The obligations in this oath for service all contain the phrase when required by the law, hardly an unbearable demand in exchange for the benefits that the United States is providing you.

As for Will’s disquiet about domestic enemies, I would first point to the Civil War, then to a whole host of groups up to and including the KKK and the ELF, that have engaged in violence against the United States. I believe these are the domestic enemies referred to. Of course, Will feels the jack-booted Bushnazi thugs from the Ashcroft internment camps all too closely breathing down his neck.

So, the question I have for Will and everyone else who declines to take the Oath is: If American can’t count on you, why should you be able to count on it? Loyalty goes both ways. Right now, you get all the protections and benefits of citizenship without having to accept or obligate yourself to any of the responsibilities. Sweet deal, that.

I’m glad, on the other hand, that hundreds of thousands of people every year choose to take the Oath and voluntarily become citizens of the United States. I know I can count on most of them in a pinch. Will and his friends, I’m not too sure of.

In order to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must take an oath. If you are born a citizen, you do not. Somehow, I think the naturalized citizens are luckier. They get to profess their allegiance.

via many, here via Robert Prather

I hereby declare, an oath,

that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;

that I will support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law;

that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law;

that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law;

and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose or evasion: So help me God.

How many natural born citizens would refuse to take this oath?