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Edited on Fri Nov-03-06 10:45 AM by shadowknows69
<edit to add Sorry didn't post whole report at first its there now.>
I think this will be the last column for a while and I feel I owe an explanation to the people here who have supported my little investigative reporting adventure, if you can call it that, and heaped praise on me that I humbly thank you all very kindly for. As it stands your attention to my ravings has awakened in me a desire to pursue with at least a little more vigor than in recent years, my long time dream of being a writer of some merit. The criterion for that merit is no financial figure but simply the knowledge that I may have moved even one person with these tales. That being said, I won’t be refusing any offers to write a regular paid column should any be tossed my way either lol.
I’m finding the stories I’m milking from some of these soldiers are really affecting my psyche in detrimental ways and I need to pull back for my own sake. I crave the truth in all things and I especially believe in man’s need to know the horrors that are going on in his world but I’ve heard enough for a while. If I keep getting involved in these soldiers experiences in this awful conflict I won’t be able to hold my tongue any longer about my rage against the whole situation and I’m going to get myself in trouble professionally and possibly legally. Mostly though I’m reserving my strength for the potential storms to come and that includes my mental strength. I don’t have the right to be a full time revolutionary voice just yet. I have a wife who has suffered also the depression I have reaped from hearing about the death and horror that George W Bush has sown and I owe her some time in my soul. Rest assured the book will be started. Whether I’ll be able to craft it into any kind of coherent narrative is questionable but I will try. You will have exclusive reading rights to the introductory chapter when it’s finished and once again I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your attention to my simple journeys. So then without further ado here are two more stories from “The front lines from the back seat.”
The tragic redistribution of heroes
One thing is for certain. George Bush is sending our heroes to fight over there so they can’t be heroic over here. Our base plays host to a lot of National Guard troops. Usually New York guard or New Jersey but they come here quite a bit for training and I guess more recently for deployment. This story isn’t about the guard exactly but in meeting many of them I see the spectrum of American citizens that aren’t able to do constructive things for America anymore. I meet teachers, business owners, fathers and mothers, all going off to war in a distant land while communities here suffer. Civilian engineers who take care of our streets and cities now going off to dismantle IED’s and rebuild Iraqi infrastructure and doctors putting broken soldiers back together while the U.S. suffers a health care crisis. Heroes all, no doubt, doing good things for the Iraqi people and the U.S. military but unable to do heroic things in their own country. This essay is not to dispute the validity of the motives or actions of these soldiers only to illustrate another question that must be asked when tallying the final cost of this war.
I met a man who to me is the most tragic example of this war driven exile of our national heroes. I got to conversing with one soldier who had done at least one tour of duty in Iraq already and was soon headed to another in Afghanistan. I learned that he had joined the army later in life than most at the age of thirty. He went on to explain that its not like he did it for work or anything just that most of the men in his family had served and he always wanted to join himself and decided it was the right time. I got no sense that the war itself was his main motivation and there didn’t seem to be any overt family pressure other than what he felt about the tradition. This man just wanted the opportunity to be a hero for his country. Noble enough intentions no doubt but when I learned of what he did for a living before the army it made no sense to me. This man was a professional fireman in a large metro area before he joined the military.
I wouldn’t dream to judge anyone’s reasoning for such a decision but I can’t pretend to understand or accept it. It just seems so typical of the waste of war. A man who was a hero by any definition of the word simply because of what he chose to do, selflessly fight to save lives, turned 180 degrees into someone who is expected to fight to end life. The decision to become a soldier obviously doesn’t make this man any less of a hero but one can’t help but wonder the lives that would be saved if not for this war. The youth that could have been taught better, the sick that could have been treated better. In times of peace the United States has willingly lent the world all of these resources. The waste involved in sending our best and our brightest from peaceful professions off to engage in death and conquest or to even inspire someone to put down a fire hose for a rifle in my opinion is a sin beyond measure.
Another recent ride introduced me to four soldiers I picked up from two different barracks. The one was quite an animated character announcing loudly his intentions to spend the evening continuing his rapidly progressing drunk. The three I grabbed were on their way to do the same after some dinner at a Ruby Tuesdays in town. My animated fare that grabbed the shotgun seat instantly struck up a conversation with the others asking them all their MOS, where they were from, how long in the service etc. etc. and wildly boasting about his own accomplishments and accolades in the army which were considerable if they were true.
His bragging, including claiming he was Special Forces, seemed vastly exaggerated and one of the other soldiers attempted to call him on some facts which he did seem to answer satisfactorily and he even asked the soldier quizzing him, “Wow, how do you know so fucking much?”
According to his tales our Special Forces friend had done three tours in combat zones and said he was trying to get back to Iraq after being back for only three months because, and I quote, “I love killing mother fuckers and blowing mother fuckers up.”
The three seemed almost inspired by this outburst and started remarking how badly they wanted to get to Iraq and one was asking advice on how to get deployed to a permanent combat zone.
Beneath bravado occasionally truth is uncovered.
“You WANT to go to Iraq?” Said our gung ho killer, “This war is fucked up. You think you’ll be shooting at people in Iraq? You don’t shoot at mother fuckers you know what you’re going to be doing?”
Our other three soldiers we learned were from the new engineer unit coming to be stationed at our base, new recruits all, specialists in the disarming of explosives.
“You aint gonna be shooting at people and you won’t be disarming shit you know what you do in Iraq? In Iraq you patrol all day and wait to get blown the fuck up. Then whoever didn’t get blown up cordons off the area and we fight any fighters. You think cause you’re engineers you won’t patrol but everyone goes out on patrol”
Despite this chilling speech a couple of the guys still expressed their desire to be in combat. With my mind reeling as usual from these stories I mentioned to one of them that soldiers have told me The Taliban gives a better “stand up fight” and he should p put in for Afghanistan. He look liked he considered the advice. I prayed for a quick end to the ride.
I have no doubt that our gung ho buddy belongs in a combat zone somewhere but as I said despite his rhetoric he seemed genuinely shocked and concerned of the eagerness of the new soldiers as if he couldn’t hear himself earlier praise the joys of killing. He left the cab first and almost laughingly told the three “Good luck in Iraq” knowing the horrors they’ll soon see.
A man who was a fireman puts down the hose for a rifle, a man who was in the service in peacetime now transformed into a stone cold killer and three young men aching for their first kills outside a video game. To inspire this in the men and women of your country is the greatest crime that this administration has visited upon us. I fear our grand and honorable military is now simply a job for killers. Apply at the door, if your trigger finger works we’ll find a job for you. A waste of our heroes that could do so much good in the world spent frivolously on death and destruction for the machinations of a few in power. Support your troops. Bring them home. Always tip your cabbie.
Shadow out
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