I’ve held off on writing this for quite a while, but the idea that HOAT is reading deadissue regularly at this point is foolish. I certainly wouldn’t blame him for not reading my bullshit on a daily basis. That said…this is a friend of mine, a man I love a great deal for now and always. We’ve had our differences of course, but who doesn’t? Something I can say for sure is that regardless of what happened, if this guy called me up in a state of desperation, I’d be there for him regardless of the circumstances.
I read these articles in various publications about linguists in Iraq, how they generally interact with locals wearing a mask to protect their identity. While this image makes my stomach churn, I’m also grateful for the knowledge that a linguist’s life is sacred. Surely they’re not going to be sending him out on a convoy down IED-alley for diesel fuel. Regardless, my daily practice of checking the weather in Baghdad has taken on a new meaning these past months with the knowledge that he IS going to be there.
HOAT became fluent in Russian in 63 weeks, as did Adam and S.R. – and before learning Arabic in the same amount of time, he happened to also learn Serbo-Croatian. I remember an occasion where he was stationed in Wurzburg while I was in Vilseck (Germany). My unit (2-2 Infantry) was on alert to deploy to Kosovo in a warfighting capacity, so the trip I made to go pick him up had to be fit around a 7 day 18 hour schedule. I felt bad having to leave him in Sulzberg-Rosenberg with strangers while I was slaving over a deployment inventory that had already been checked twice, packed, unpacked, packed and unpacked already. It was also around this time that I broke 4 ribs during riot control training, and was denied the right to an x-ray until our unit was ordered to stand down (Clinton and General Wesley Clark brought more nations on board, bombed the hell out of the place, then sent “peace keepers” in afterwards).
Since that time I’ve become a civilian, and HOAT has reenlisted twice. Now he’s on a course destined for that place across the ocean…a fact I find hard to accept most days, but what the hell can I do about it? Perhaps craft the paragraph or piece that turns humanity on it’s end and allows the apathy to drip out, on down the drain…yea, I’ve been there, and it’s useless. Better I have a crew of friends (RT, karl, menace, SR, helsing, adam) who will read what I write and respond, rather than give in to the foolish notion that whatever I have to say makes any difference on what happens from day to day in this world.
Insignificance is something that a blogger either accepts or battles against until finally there’s no more energy to write. There’s no more truth you can apply to the page, no more emotion you can squander for the sake of a string of characters housed in a server somewhere that nobody but your friends give a shit about.
I’ve accepted this…and it’s comforting, because in all honesty, the community makes me happy every day. I don’t care whether I get more ‘hits’ tomorrow than I did today. This became something different than that a long time ago. But what happens when I have something to write about that transcends the typical flow and attitude of the blogsphere? Let’s say I write something about HOAT and post it on DailyKos…let’s say 30 people respond to the piece and wish him good luck…what the fuck does that even mean?
Life is emptiness – regardless of how hard we fight against the truth of this statement, I know for a fact that I could be run down by a drunk driver tomorrow and the world would go on without me. My sons wouldn’t, my wife wouldn’t…but in the grand scheme of things, what difference is it going to make?
That’s the problem with all of this. Humanity has been stripped from the debate entirely, and by delving into such things, I’m seen by some as “weak on defense” or whatever asanine political bullshit is being applied to Iraq in a given week…
The think that I KNOW, is that HOAT and a hundred thousand of his colleagues have no buisness in that bullshit country at this point. Truth be told, if the economy was popping out 50K/year jobs like clockwork and the politics were easy, there might not be a nead to keep them there. Circumstances though, they determine reality, and as long as Republicans have elections to win, this war will continue. A chance for gaining breathing room or a diversion is quite valuable to the POLITICIANS in charge of our republic today. They’ll NEVER admit a mistake, let alone call it a day, be a man and call it what it is…of course, because it’s not real to them.
Shit, the Pentagon even barred its own personell from attending the premire of Baghdad ER. So the reason behind WHY my friend, who I love, is destined for Iraq…that I cannot answer without feeling a type of sadness that can only be cured by booze and long rambles like this one.
Hoat made his own choices in life, and I have to support them. They certainly aren’t for me. I think of how much I’ve accomplished since leaving the army. The last time I saw Hoat in person, I literally had my college diploma in hand. That was what I needed to do, and Hoat felt like he needed to stay in the army. He did know that, by learning Arabic, he’d be going to Iraq and all the potential consequences and iniquity that trip would entail.
I’m in a rambling mood as well. HOAT knew the consequences, he wasn’t shanghai’ed into the reinlistment. Who knows, maybe the situation over there will improve for the US soldiers in the next 6-7 months(maybe that was the thinking), then again maybe not.
For me, the hardest thing to do in life besides joining the Army was to quit the Army. Currently, there are more negatives on the “staying in” column than on the “getting out” column, more so than pre-pre-pre 9/11. Still, DLI west is not a bad assignment, and if you are a believer in fate (Never forget Harrison -the frantic call at 6AM, stuck at the Las Brisas bar in Salinas, still drunk, just an hour or so before the morning formation –Ah Yes, I can hear S.R. commenting now: “That’s not flirting with disaster, that’s raping it!”. And yet, the SOB, god love him, made it to the formation…without a scratch.)…
The point being, what is the point? Oh yeah, Fate! If it is your time, then it really is your time. Doesn’t matter if you are in some remote part of the Annapurna mountain rage in Nepal and you just happen to slip off a cliff on a trek or worse you pick up an incurable disease from eating in a roadside cafe there, or if you are in some well-frequented gas station/package store on Interstate 15, giving some Asian dude advice on how to fix his broke-down vehicle and that dude misinterpretes your goodwill as a provacation and just up and puts a cap in your ass, bravo! then you time is your time. I’m reminded of Walken and De Niro in “The Deer Hunter” –“This is this!” It (life) all comes down to: “One Shot” right before Nicki pulls the trigger…but I digress, there’s nothing like the ocean going delights of hard liquor to get you through the awkward, lonely moments of contemplation.
Look at Ken Lay and Frank Amestoy. Dropped dead of heart attacks.
I have a bit of a fear of dying too, although its more about “chump style.” I don’t want to die like a chump. I also want to complete some of my developmental milestones in life; get married, have a kid, watch some of my elders drop off first.
Yea, shit happens, and some of us go out like a chump, though it’s not nearly as random as we like to tell ourselves. Pick up the paper and someone gets killed in a hit and run while walking their dog down a neighborhood road at 6 in the morning…
The reason that’s in the paper, the reason that’s ‘news’…I suppose it’s to make us feel good that we were lucky today, but to be honest, I never read that local stuff or watch the news on TV. It has a different effect on us from person to person, as to a lot of people it works to justify how squared-away they are, as opposed to all those animals out there fucking it up for the rest of us.
I don’t know…I kind of picture the world full of people like me – in the sense that we’re all trying to store up nuts for winter, maybe carve out a piece of dirt all to ourselves at some point…the junkies wanted this before they entered hell, and some of them still want it…that’s all the soldiers want for the most part, only once in, it’s easy to become convinced that the only way you’re ever going to get it is to stay put.
Clearly life has more to offer someone born in this country than little kids flipping you the bird and throwing rocks in 120 degree heat, an explosion being the last thing you remember.
We’re the devil over there. We’ve murdered tens of thousands and nothing has gotten better. To us it’s a necessary evil, part of what it takes to ‘get right’ involves blood…supposedly everyone in this country understands that, and as the parent-figure in this world, sometimes there’s the need to break out the switch, or, in this case the light-saber.
HOAT’s about to step into a reality all its own, complete with Popeye’s chicken and beheadings and a meditation with Satan over commodity futures and which chick from the support unit has the nicest tits.
You make a lot of good points.
Like Adam said, sometimes leaving the army can be just as hard as joining in the first place. I never felt this way. Then again, I never let myself become obsessed with the bi-weekly direct deposit payments into my checking account. After about a year, I saw the army as a means to an end. I saved my $$ because I knew it was not for me. I knew that the army would never give me ANY, and I mean ANY, of what I wanted out of life. It wasn’t going to give me any breathing room, some time to myself, a college diploma, or a girl with long hair that smells nice.
Too many people think of army retirement as “a mortgage.” I’ve heard that refrain several times. Stay in for 20, and that retirement will pay for your monthly mortgage. The thing is, it takes the prime of your life in return, and I’m pretty sure I will be able to pay for a mortgage when I am 40. I’ll just be able to live my 30s like I want and not how some buzzhead fucknuts thinks.
So, to agree with Al, I am trying to get my piece of dirt and save my nuts just like everybody else.
The thing about the army for me was, most of the time, it was like being in a barrel of shit: It was warm and comfortable. Of course, there were always the suck-ass moments like deployments, and the piss tests and health and welfares with the German Shepherds (it was like the beginning of “Hogan’s Heroes” at times) at four in the morning that made the decision to go in regrettable. And there were other issues like geographic isolation and moving from one post to another every few years, that were less an immediate irritant, but still deeply entrenched in my soul, rooted out only by liquor consumption. Leaving the Army was always a decision that was easy to make in my mind, but a hard decision to execute, especially after being in for 8 years. There were always “perks” thrown at me like pieces of candy that at the time made all of that bullshit bearable. Ultimately, it was hard for me to leave because I was left with:What now? What do I want out of life? What is life all about? just more existential and generally depressing, sobering issues that I didn’t really want to face before the end of my first enlistment, that I still don’t want to face now.
I went to the Oakland Zoo yesterday and I swear, I was the only adult male without a child. I started thinking about what my buddy S.R. once posited a few years ago: (I’m paraphrasing) Spread the seed! Basically, he wanted to have kids to counter the serial impregnators of the world, the ones with no morals or common decency yet somehow find several mates and just impregnate and impregnate year after year. It’s sound advice. I just don’t think I’m ready to procreate. Who knows if I’ll ever be.
It always saddens me when I hear a college educated woman say she doesn’t want any kids because “there are too many” as it is on this earth. Why are there too many, too many that aren’t taken care of as it is? Because idiots procreate without thinking. They shoot wads like it’s the county fair.
I forget a lot of the BS of the army, maybe by repressed memory, until I talk to you Adam, Al, or Hoat. Speaking of piss tests, I was telling Hoat about when I had PT at 1100. I woke up, had PT at 1100 for an hour, then went home and drank a cup of coffee or two before I was to head to work at 1500.
After the coffee, I was called for an impromptu piss test. Being the bottlecap bladder that I am, I thought no problem. I marched down to Co HQ and pissed in the small cup. The meatgazer admonished me. “You need to drink more water!” You see, my piss was dark yellow. I had just had PT and coffee. I didn’t have enough time to “drink water.” But what got me was, “What did this fucker know?” It amazed me that some asshole actually commented and admonished me for the color of my piss. The army never leaves your business. Hoat told me that the opposite has happened to him. He has been admonished for being too hydrated before a test, and the gazer subtly commenting that maybe he was trying to skew the results with dillution. Amazing!
The NCOs who’d watch over as you filled the cup, there was two types…the one who was punching the clock with this particular assignment, basically would look straight ahead…then there was the jerk like that one who’d comment on the output, or stare at your piece like something out of a nightmare…in Germany I got angry with one of them and said ‘Fuck it!’ gave up and walked out, first sergeant asked me what was up and I said something like, ‘I can go as long as it’s not with him’…the NCO starts talking about regulations, I make a remark about how it was too creepy, words are exchanged (in a combat unit things are certainly top down, where you don’t get into it with an NCO, but I had some “political capital” to spend)…plus, that guy would find himself in the PAC at some point needing paperwork for something…
Blah blah blah – – – a few years earlier I was in Monterey and an NCO was pretty much doing the same thing, only he was shouting orders at me, telling me to hurry up, ‘I’ve got a lot of soldiers to get through here’…
Maybe these guys were gay. Maybe the sicko who judged the color of SR’s product was a “golden shower” afficinado…shit, maybe the bastard had a hard on and really wanted to gulp it down.
Knowing that a couple of sergeants gang raped a teenage girl in Iraq, then tried to burn her body to cover it up…wouldn’t surprise me if that NCO had a taste for the warm golden.
But it’s the concept of living your life WITHOUT some redneck hanging over you with your piece exposed twice a year that makes civilian life so much sweeter.
Amen to that, and basically every other point you made.
I can’t really remember any meatgazer salivating over my shlong. As far as I could remember, it was punching the clock. You can tell a clean piss from one dealing with horse urine taped to your balls to keep it warm just by the amount of fidgeting.
Go Hood!