Memorial Day thoughts

Military forces are a mixed bag. Some are there by accident because they joined up for non-patriotic, non-militaristic reasons. Some are scary types who like combat. Some are idealistic about their country and accept combat as a reasonable option.

The tributes can seem overdone. The motives for them are as varied, if not more varied, than the motives of the troops for joining up in the first place. How many of the tributes ever address the basic insanity of war? If you accept that combat to the death is a respectable political tool and an inevitable part of the human experience, then prophecies of an eventual fiery doom for the human race are a no-brainer. You don't have to have magical second sight in any century to extrapolate that we simply get better and better at snuffing each other out until the whole thing comes to a spectacular conclusion when technology and asininity fall into perfect alignment.

If the future is endless war, as the past has been, then honor the dead with all the ridiculous hyperbole you can muster. It doesn't matter who's right, just who's on your team. It all ends up in the same lake of fire eventually. But if you believe we might eventually outgrow war you have to walk a more careful path. Praise the efforts and sacrifices of the poor bastards who will have to die in the interim before we finally manage to put that form of conflict resolution behind us, without making it sound so great that you attract another whole generation to its so-called glories.

Driving turns you into an asshole

It's true. Driving a car turns you and me and anyone else who does it into an asshole. There's nothing you can do about it. The traffic flow system we have created rewards a certain level of asshole behavior and enables a much higher one.

Even with the best of intentions, try to get through a full day of driving without doing at least one thing even you yourself have to agree was assholical. I know I couldn't do it, and I bet you couldn't either.

The game is rigged. We seal ourselves in glass and metal cans and try to get from place to place as fast as we feel conditions will allow. We deal not only with physical limitations in this quest, but with the imposed limits of legality, some scraps of courtesy, and simple self-preservation. With all that loaded on us, we try to flow as smoothly as schooling fish or a big flock of birds, but they're all generally going to the same place. We're scampering all over the place.

Good luck and be safe out there today, Asshole.

Freedom isn't free

Read the sign, pal. Read the sign.

Tidbits from Iraq

Lately I've been able to spend time with a veteran of the Iraq war. As always with someone who has been through something heavy, I let them bring it up. Once the topic is open I might ask a few questions, but if the information comes naturally from the flow of the conversation it is more likely to be candid, revelatory and helpful to us both.

Unfortunately, I can't take notes while we talk. Days have passed, so much of it loses the crispness it had when I first heard it. But I hold impressions.

He speaks casually about getting blown up, as if it were an everyday experience. He's been blown up a couple of times, apparently. It does not invariably maim and kill. He said there's a loud noise and you get thrown around. He suffered a gash on his head from the edge of his own helmet in one incident, as he was thrown into the windshield of the Humvee. He got stitched up and went back to work. He made it sound like just another occupational hazard. Certainly you have to view it that way if you are going to continue to work in that environment.

In random order, he's told about "slapping a corrupt sheik" while patrolling one neighborhood, and watching with amusement as a battling crowd of Iraqi children swarmed around candy he and his patrol had thrown to them. He said that Iraqis sympathetic to the occupation are more than happy to let American patrols work out of their houses, because it does bring some amount of order to the neighborhood. Mind you this was when he was there, in the place where he operated. He said his unit routinely escorted kids to school.

One day I clicked on a news video about something else and it dumped right into a report about the recent death of a Marine after the explosion of a roadside bomb.

"Sorry, man," I said.

"It's all right," he said. He really seemed unperturbed.

I haven't been in combat, but I've done dangerous things and known people who did dangerous things. We all develop a level of detachment or we quit doing the dangerous thing. No doubt our fighting forces are well-versed in this detachment. Not one of them believes it can't happen to him, but each must believe that his chances are best if he adheres to his training, and does his job. The ones who lose are the ones who made mistakes or whose luck ran out. No one lives forever.

Someone asked him what items he would really like to see in a care package from home. After various adult content was ruled out, he gave his suggestions.

"No peanut butter," he said. "There's tons of peanut butter over there. And don't send sunscreen."

Regarding personal grooming products he said that the Iraqis themselves use a lot of scents and cologne, and the women wear tons of makeup.

"Whenever we go into an Iraqi house, that stuff is everywhere. It's fun to try to squirt your buddy in the back with women's perfume."

Oh yeah: send baby wipes. Those they can use.

International phone cards are good, but $20 only gets about 5 minutes unless they're calling from a big base.

He said they like to get hard candy, not just to eat but to toss out to the kiddies.

"You wouldn't believe how they fight over that stuff. We just laugh, but they're kicking each other and everything.

"One time I got a bag of Tootsie Rolls. I hate Tootsie Rolls. So I gave them to the turret gunner and he threw the whole bag out in the road. Kids came out of nowhere. They were jumping off roofs. Pretty soon there was this whole crowd of them fighting for the Tootsie Rolls. They were punching and kicking each other, and hitting each other with stuff."

He talked about putting the cuffs on PUCs, blindfolding them, placing them in the cargo area of a Humvee (I think he said "throwing") and driving recklessly around the streets to deliver them to detainment.

A PUC is a "person under control."

Take thousands of aggressive young people who believed in combat enough to join a combat force. Drop them into a foreign country where friend and foe might look identical. Deprive them of a lot of clear-cut combat, but keep them in unpredictable levels of peril. They already tend to have fairly blunt senses of humor.

I like this guy. He got sucked into the war by accident. I believe he entered the reserves before 9-11-01. He doesn't want to reenlist. His two tours over there were enough. But while he's in he will do his job. He's moved up to sergeant now, which he says is more of a pain in the ass, but he rises to the responsibility. He will probably not go back, since his active period ends soon and he doesn't have a specialty in high demand.