Fishing
When lightly & brightly on tip-toe I stood
On the long level Line of a motionless Cloud
And ho! what a Skittle-ground! quoth he aloud
And wish'd from his heart nine Nine-pins to see
In brightness & size just proportion'd to me.
-Coleridge
When I was home on leave, Jennifer noticed how very tense I was when we were in the car and would pass a vehicle broken down or stopped on the side of the road. Even pulling out into traffic made me nervous. It passed after only a day or two. Something she did not notice, however, was how I cannot stand in lines. I would always warm up the car while she was checking out the movies, or browse the magazines while she was waiting in line at the grocery store. Strange people standing behind me make me so nervous I want to punch them. I have rarely experienced the actual feeling that people are describing when they’re saying their “skin crawls.” That’s what it does to me now. I haven’t been outside the wire, at least on an actual patrol or raid, in a month or two, now, and it still bothers me.
A few months ago, here, an Iraqi woman was working for us on another FOB as a masseuse. This was one of the larger bases, and I believe it’s all shut down now. Anyway, she was working as a masseuse. She was kidnapped, and before they killed her, they cut off her hands. My good friend, who I mentioned several months ago when he got promoted and moved to the intel shop, has video they made of her. That’s what these people do, here. You don’t like somebody, you disagree with their profession or morals or just the general cut of their jib, and you torture them to death and send the video to al Jazeera. I cannot imagine, when I am most lonely or angry or depressed, that we’ve done any good here. It’s not necessarily that these people are evil; they are just insane. I can’t remember ever hearing of an in-depth look, like, a psychological case study, of how tinfoil-hat-crazy tyrannical dictators permanently damage the sanity of their subjects en masse. But is it so far-fetched to imagine that it is so? And if these people are really insane—culturally insane—how much can we help them? We’re killers, not psychiatrists.
Don’t get me wrong. I know many of them personally. They seem like fantastic people. Funny, smart, tireless, and capable of amazing bravery. But sometimes I wonder if they’re all just waiting for me to let my guard down. Or I wonder, at least, if we’re treating symptoms and ignoring the disease. I’m not sure how much progress we can make if people refuse to call a problem what it is. And I’m not sure how deeply I feel the need to protect people who are so violently against what we’re doing here, these self-styled “anti-war” folks and the reporters that reveal code-word-sensitive information to our enemies and get Pulitzers for it.
Anti-war people amuse me, as a warrior, for several reasons. For one, they always assure everybody very loudly that they “support the troops.” I am a troop, and I don’t feel very supported when it’s insinuated that I’m a jackbooted thug for Big Oil or the Trilateral Commission or whatever other shadowy New World Order group these people are hip to this week. And what kind of person goes around reassuring people of their innocence for no reason? What would you think if somebody came up to you and asserted loudly and firmly that they were NOT a rapist? Or a drug dealer? Seriously, what if some random guy approached you and without any introduction, just said, “I tell you one thing, man: I’m certainly no arsonist!”
Mostly, though, the whole concept of being against a practice but supportive of its practitioners is hilarious to me. Anti-abortion activists don’t tack “but we really support people who have them!” onto the bottoms of their protest signs. People who hate football don’t say “but I sure do love NFL fans!” You never hear anybody say, “man, I really hate Star Trek, but I support Shatner and Nimoy, as well as fans of the show!” That would be stupid, and counterintuitive. If people would have to guts to stand up and say “war is wrong, and anybody who chooses it as a profession is also wrong,” well, I would disagree, but I could at least respect it. Just come out and say that you hate the military, if it is so; beating around the bush just wastes time.
In any event, I think after contemplation that I have not changed at all, really. The two worlds I live in are divided very clearly; and once I remind myself a few times that they’ve been juxtaposed, and I’m back in my home world, I will go back to normal.
On the long level Line of a motionless Cloud
And ho! what a Skittle-ground! quoth he aloud
And wish'd from his heart nine Nine-pins to see
In brightness & size just proportion'd to me.
-Coleridge
When I was home on leave, Jennifer noticed how very tense I was when we were in the car and would pass a vehicle broken down or stopped on the side of the road. Even pulling out into traffic made me nervous. It passed after only a day or two. Something she did not notice, however, was how I cannot stand in lines. I would always warm up the car while she was checking out the movies, or browse the magazines while she was waiting in line at the grocery store. Strange people standing behind me make me so nervous I want to punch them. I have rarely experienced the actual feeling that people are describing when they’re saying their “skin crawls.” That’s what it does to me now. I haven’t been outside the wire, at least on an actual patrol or raid, in a month or two, now, and it still bothers me.
A few months ago, here, an Iraqi woman was working for us on another FOB as a masseuse. This was one of the larger bases, and I believe it’s all shut down now. Anyway, she was working as a masseuse. She was kidnapped, and before they killed her, they cut off her hands. My good friend, who I mentioned several months ago when he got promoted and moved to the intel shop, has video they made of her. That’s what these people do, here. You don’t like somebody, you disagree with their profession or morals or just the general cut of their jib, and you torture them to death and send the video to al Jazeera. I cannot imagine, when I am most lonely or angry or depressed, that we’ve done any good here. It’s not necessarily that these people are evil; they are just insane. I can’t remember ever hearing of an in-depth look, like, a psychological case study, of how tinfoil-hat-crazy tyrannical dictators permanently damage the sanity of their subjects en masse. But is it so far-fetched to imagine that it is so? And if these people are really insane—culturally insane—how much can we help them? We’re killers, not psychiatrists.
Don’t get me wrong. I know many of them personally. They seem like fantastic people. Funny, smart, tireless, and capable of amazing bravery. But sometimes I wonder if they’re all just waiting for me to let my guard down. Or I wonder, at least, if we’re treating symptoms and ignoring the disease. I’m not sure how much progress we can make if people refuse to call a problem what it is. And I’m not sure how deeply I feel the need to protect people who are so violently against what we’re doing here, these self-styled “anti-war” folks and the reporters that reveal code-word-sensitive information to our enemies and get Pulitzers for it.
Anti-war people amuse me, as a warrior, for several reasons. For one, they always assure everybody very loudly that they “support the troops.” I am a troop, and I don’t feel very supported when it’s insinuated that I’m a jackbooted thug for Big Oil or the Trilateral Commission or whatever other shadowy New World Order group these people are hip to this week. And what kind of person goes around reassuring people of their innocence for no reason? What would you think if somebody came up to you and asserted loudly and firmly that they were NOT a rapist? Or a drug dealer? Seriously, what if some random guy approached you and without any introduction, just said, “I tell you one thing, man: I’m certainly no arsonist!”
Mostly, though, the whole concept of being against a practice but supportive of its practitioners is hilarious to me. Anti-abortion activists don’t tack “but we really support people who have them!” onto the bottoms of their protest signs. People who hate football don’t say “but I sure do love NFL fans!” You never hear anybody say, “man, I really hate Star Trek, but I support Shatner and Nimoy, as well as fans of the show!” That would be stupid, and counterintuitive. If people would have to guts to stand up and say “war is wrong, and anybody who chooses it as a profession is also wrong,” well, I would disagree, but I could at least respect it. Just come out and say that you hate the military, if it is so; beating around the bush just wastes time.
In any event, I think after contemplation that I have not changed at all, really. The two worlds I live in are divided very clearly; and once I remind myself a few times that they’ve been juxtaposed, and I’m back in my home world, I will go back to normal.
posted by Battler03 at 2:40 PM
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