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I'm a professional musician. Last night, I guest-hosted an open mike for a good friend of mine who is on vacation. I don't do that often, but it's fun once in awhile. The basic gig is I come in , set up the sound system, get the show rolling and then other people who want to perform each play four or five songs. So unlike most of my shows, other than minor emceeing duty or the occasional sound issues every twenty or thirty minutes, I'm mostly just hanging out in this bar talking to folks, instead of actually on stage performing.
This guy comes in. 49 years old. Only a little older than me. Army Ranger. Did 12 years and got out nearly 7 years ago. Moved to the state where I live. Wife, family, construction business. Proud of his service, but figured it was over. Wrong. He's been recalled and ships out to Iraq in a couple of weeks. He's home on leave. His unit, one of the elite units in the US Army, was one of the spearhead units of the invasion and ended up over there far longer than the originally planned six months. They are supposed to be an elite mobile strike force. Now, after only a few months stateside, they're going back, with a bunch of recalled officers and soldiers and reservists filling out the ranks. He's obviously always been a very gung-ho guy. Definitely the kind of guy you can picture jumping out of airplanes with an M-16. He obviously wanted someone to talk to and wanted to vent.
He drank a few beers and I drank a few whiskeys and he said he and "everyone in his unit," mostly active Army, plus a bunch of guys who have been recalled, in his words "hate Bush." He said, "Bush has really screwed himself and has really pissed off the military. They send us over there for six months and it turns into a year and then into sixteen months and then they call up a bunch of guys like me, pushing 50. Now I'm supposed to go back over there and lead a bunch of kids getting shot at? The unit is really being torn up by this. No one knows what the fuck we are doing over there. There's no point to it."
They didn't forcibly recall 50-year-old guys in WWII, people.
He doesn't know how long he'll be in. Apparently, they can keep him for up to another three years and he assumes he'll be in that whole time. He said his unit is one of the finest military forces in the world and they will do their job, but it is nowhere near 100%, isn't ready to go back into theater, and was never trained or intended to be used as an occupying force.
He also talked about how Bush has cut support for veterans, so no one believes they will be taken care of "if they ever do come home."
Man, I am proud of our service people and our veterans. I was an Air Force brat. One of my best friends is a Viet Nam vet. Another friend of mine is a Reservist who has been, in effect, enslaved for over a year now with no end in sight (although he's at least in the States, not in Iraq). My oldest friend was career Navy and just retired. I'm WAY anti-war, but I'm not a "blame-the-military" antiwar guy. This really tore me up. The look that kept creeping into this guys' eyes--mingled anger, sorrow, dread, uncertainty . . .
Think about all the 19 year-old kids who are being sent over there like hunks of meat into a sausage grinder. And then think of this guy--obviously a formerly lifelong Republican, gung-ho ex-military professional who now doubts everything he's ever believed in.
Madness. Evil, monstrous, madness.
I know it is a different war, a different place, a different time, but this is becoming so much like Viet Nam I just can't believe it.
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