This is pathetic. Four years ago I was in Iraq. Three years ago I was home and cheerfully awaiting my ETS. Two years ago I was a civilian- and my kid cousin graduated from West Point. A year ago he was doing junior officer training crap. This week, as an infantry platoon leader he got to Kuwait. He'll be in Iraq later this month.
What gets me is that nothing's really different in Iraq for my cousin's (first?) deployment than it was during mine. Sure, we had brown camouflage- and green, for that matter, while they have those ACUs now. We had bolt-on armor kits for our rickety humvees and today they have strykers and MRAPs. The Mahdi Army was a declared hostile force when I was there, and we're only "supporting" grossly ineffective Iraqi operations against them today.
I've been home for three years and nothing's any different. Now I've got to wait to hear that my cousin got blown up- on the same roads that I sweated IEDs on. Man, this sucks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Oh, but the surge is working right? Everyone who was on their 3rd and 4th tours when I was on my first said it wasn't any different.
One thing is actually different from my deployment to his. My main contact with the world was through my wife, who kept family and friends up to date with an email list. My cousin's wife set up a blog so that she and my cousin can do it together and we all can communicate right back.
It would have been nicer to see real progress, but at least this little bit of progress helps the troops.
Make sure he gets his SITREP.
I will, but I've got a lot of issues.
For all I know he's an IVAW member already- although I expect he would have found my profile and contacted me by now. For the time being I don't want to be a distraction to him. He's going to be wading waist deep through shit that I simply drove past and I don't want to cramp his style.
He's not resisting; his duty position isn't a resisting one. He'll approve of and may overlook (encourage) resistance, but he won't resist himself. We all follow our oaths as best we can, and he's trying to hold his little corner of the Army together as best he can. The Army has to survive this clusterfuck or we're in bigger trouble than we already are, and he's doing his best to keep it in one piece.
For the moment I'm just taking up my turn to send care packages. SITREP will be in them, but I'm not going to push him. He's landing literally in the middle of the shit and has enough to focus on.
I have complete confidence in him, so I'm not going to even nudge him- but he'll get his SITREP, don't you worry.
Whatever happens, I won't let my dog contact him. I'm in the VFW, but that idiot dog of mine went and joined a group that's even more pro-war than they are.
Post a Comment