Silver Lining on Iraq? I think not...

In re: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/opinion/the-silver-linings-of-iraq.html?_r=0

As I read this article by The New York Times' John A. Nagl, I found myself shaking my head. Looking for a silver lining after ten years of war...I can see that. I can see the need for seeking something positive to possibly, maybe, slightly justify the loss of those 4,400 lives.

I'm sorry John, with all due respect, I don't see it.

Late one night, after taps, I'm lying on my rack in boot camp and I hear a girl say, "I heard something today....we're at war, y'all."  Metal racks creaked and groaned as everyone sat up, looking around, trying to identify the voice in the dark.  The tousle-haired girl from New York, hard from the streets of the Bronx, was the only one lying still, staring at the ceiling.

"I heard on the TV at the commissary.  We declared war on Iraq. They're sending troops." Her voice almost sounded dead, monotone and flat.

We all tried to process what she was saying.  Here we were, being trained for battle, and war was beginning.  Holy. Shit. Three days went by with all of us having our personal nightmares, visions of Red October and scenes of the USS Cole with a 40 foot hole blown wide in her hull.

Finally, the base chaplain was sent around to each division to inform us in person.  Yes, we were now at war.  Yes, this changed the game. And yes, we were now warriors. When we left this facility, there was a good chance, particularly if we were being trained to be corpsman or gunners mates, we could be sent to fill out Army or Marine forces. So yes, we could have our boots in sand, in a combat zone.

We were given the unique opportunity to walk away right then.  A recruit had found out on his own and decided to jump the back fence, a high brick wall, and was hit by a train making his escape.  The Navy wanted to avoid any more of those tragedies, so we were given a one-time only walking pass, good for 24 hours.  I never thought about leaving. I did think a lot about dying.

For all my concern and worry, I actually never spent more than a few scattered weeks in any desert. I was never in direct combat, not even close. Most of my time in the military was spent behind doors layered with lead, vault doors, processing and sending classified messages and documents, closing the filter behind the eyes to what I was seeing and reading, just passing it on, passing it on.  I didn't feel the neck-snapping jerk of my truck running over an IED, I didn't experience the phantom pain of a limb blown away, and I didn't look in the eyes of a brown-skinned child pointing a gun at me.  That was for my friends to experience. I waltzed my way through this war managing to avoid all personal injury.

The rest of the military wasn't so lucky. Over 4,400 deaths....young men and women, tattooed and salty-mouthed, listening to Lil Wayne or Rascal Flatts on their iPods when their lives were ripped from them. The very people we shared locker rooms, classrooms, parties with in high school....dead. For a search for weapons of mass destruction that proved to be one of the biggest shams in military history.

And you find a silver lining in that?

Absolutely not.

The one quote with which I heartily agree is this: "But there have been two such wars over the past decade, and the all-volunteer force has come through these crucibles of blood and fire with enormous distinction."

You're damn straight we did, John.  You're damn straight.  We stayed.  When given the opportunity to walk, as I'm sure most boot camp facilities did that first week, we stayed.  We went into the face of unknown terror, kicking down doors in a foreign land, our minds twisted with the atempt at understanding the oppressive and violent religion that seeped through the very oily sands of the country, seeing women, children, and the handicapped used as bait, bombs, and murderers. 

How can you make a distinction with Vietnam except that we did not exercise the draft?  So these men, hiding in sand bunkers, burying IEDs laden with rusty nails, screws, and shrapnel, sending forth children in explosive vests, my generation faced these men voluntarily.  Our nation didn't need the draft because we kept coming. We kept facing it, deployment after deployment, time after time, month after month, the horrors mounting, and doing it all only to return home to a military medical system that wanted to ignore the realities of PTSD and send us home to our husbands and wives- the men and women who would try to heal us with their words and love but receive only brutality and chaos.  Families ripped apart, shredded, children left fatherless as soldiers, marines, sailors, walked away to settle into their life of eternal, exquisitely private torment.

Where's the silver lining in that, John?

There isn't.  The first lesson you cite is a lesson to politicians to not push our nation into unnecessary wars. They had the opportunity to learn that lesson in Vietnam.  You know the saying that those who don't heed history are doomed to repeat it.  We did.  To the tune of 4,400 lives.

The second lesson you cite is one to the military: about being underprepared for a "different" kind of war and failing to recognize the importance of language and culture.  We were unprepared to fight religious extremists, extremely young men being told that this was a religious war and that salvation awaited them for their dutiful service to their nation.  You can't fight that.  

And finally, the third lesson I've already pointed out- that our nation has evolved past the need for a draft, as demonstrated by a supply of willing, young, healthy men and women volunteering to fight.

But I'll tell you John, I don't know if that last lesson will stick.  The stories we pass on to our children are ones of disillusionment, horror, and shame.  We volunteered, yes, but for what? For the glory of securing oil?  For the advancement of political ties? To destroy a nation's culture under false pretenses and then attempt to "rebuild" them into America 2.0, nation of proud people from an ancient culture, one that didn't particularly need "saving"? To have the arrogance to assume the actions of a few extremists defined a nation and demonstrated a "need" for our help and interference?

I don't know if our children will be so willing to volunteer for such a task.  They've seen their fathers broken and changed. Their mothers cold and distant, eyes glazed over while staring into an unseen dust storm of horror. They've seen the cruel ramifications of this war, one which went largely unnoticed by the astoundingly selfish and uneducated American public who demanded more celebrity and entertainment news than caring which city was being seized or which American soldier laid down his life that day.  Never has the American media been so willing to gloss over and ignore the real atrocities of war than during the past decade, and that is shameful.

I can't find the silver lining today, reflecting back on my time in the military and that of my friends who are now forever and horribly changed. Who have picked up their dead comrades' blasted body parts. Who now wear silver legs. Who have puckered scars of stolen bullets shot from the hands of children. Who wake up sweating, screaming, at the eyes of the families they murdered under orders. I was insanely lucky to have been spared those experiences, but we all weren't and for us, there is absolutely no silver lining- there is a decade of a nation's mistakes. Ours.

GI Bill nonsense

So I finally had enough and wrote a scathing email to an editor on the staff of the Virginian Pilot. Here's the scoop:

I rely on the MGI Bill that I received after serving four years in the US Navy. I am a full-time student at Old Dominion University in my senior year of English/Pre-Law. I have not received my MGI Bill benefits for three months now. Our budget has been pinched tighter and tighter...now finally, the US Treasury, authorized by the VA, has begun issuing emergency checks of up to $3000 to veterans. Too little, too late, I say.

So The Virginian Pilot wrote a little article, in which they said "tax payer dollars" were going to this, as if the veterans themselves were not tax-paying citizens when they were active duty, earning this benefit. Let's just say I expressed my discontent in this email.

Anyway, now that's off my chest, I'm still waiting for my check...I requested it a week ago and am still waiting anxiously so we can get some of these creditors off our backs, at least temporarily. Who knows when I'll get another GI Bill payment, however....this is only a stop-gap measure by the VA when what they need to do is hire more workers at their VA education offices and light the fire under their butts to process those claims expediciously (in other words, to do their damn jobs).

It's getting really, really hard to remain patient. We are so broke we are squeezing water from rocks at this point. We ration gas, so we haven't been to church in a while because it takes a quarter tank to get there and back. Logan goes to work every day, and I go to school most days, but if my tank is dry, I don't go to school. All of my professors have attendance policies but have been extraordinarily understanding thus far. We live about half an hour from my school, which really takes some gas, especially because it's downtown and the stop-n-go really sucks the gas. We both try to fit trips to the store into the route to work or school so we don't waste gas making a separate trip, but of course we forget things and then have to make a separate trip.

Things we have learned:
-our kids like Hamburger Helper.
-Our kids do not like beans, and are pretty much over rice.
-Our two youngest go through way too many diapers, but we can save on wipes by using a washcloth that gets soaked in hot bleach water between uses.
-Bleach is cheap...might not smell as nice as other household cleaners, but does the job well for pennies and kills H1N1 dead in its tracks.
-Chocolate chip cookies are cheaper when homemade, but get eaten twice as fast :).
-Wal-Mart brand frozen broccoli is insanely cheap but is gone from the freezer case by about noon...gotta get there early.
-Farm Fresh has the cheapest milk, still, but that's about all they have cheap.
-The Market downtown puts their display meat on drastic clearance at the far right end of the meat display case...we're talking 3-4 marinated pork chops or steaks for $2, 4 lbs lean ground beef for $1.50. Not a thing wrong with them, but they have to change their display cases every day, so yesterday's stuff goes on clearance.
-Homemade Halloween costumes are way more fun. So is spending an afternoon with the family, playing football in the backyard...for free.
-PBS rocks.
-Casseroles are cheap, easy, and feed the whole family from one dish.
-We have gotten more spontaneous "I love you"s from spending one-on-one time with our children, rather than buying them toys or taking them to Chuck E Cheese or Jumpin Monkey and letting them go wild.

I'll be glad to get the check for my GI Bill, but I'm also glad to have learned a few of the things I have learned.....but seriously....gimme my money.