Dichotomy

Living in a military town continues to vex me. Over the course of the few months that I've been here, I managed to meet and become friends with A, who is, I guess, not your typical soldier. For one thing, he's 40 years old. We bonded over trivia and a love of 80's music. Oh, and that one night when we got stinking drunk on straight gin. He is, however, part of the Third Infantry's Third Brigade, which means that he's about to be deployed to Iraq for "at least" a year. I've known about this for quite some time, but now it's imminent, and I don't like it. Not that there's a lot I can do about it. At least he and a couple of his co-workers that I've met will have copies of In Me Own Words to keep them entertained.

Last Friday, A and the woman he's dating had a small get-together for a few friends. There were a couple soldiers there and a few civilians. At one point, one of the civilian guys started talking with some of the soon-to-be-deployed soldiers and started making sarcastic comments like "oh, pardon us, we're just trying to rebuild your roads," and "geez, you have electricity now, what more do you want?" I figured it was best to keep quiet - considering the crowd - but ummmmm, isn't all that rebuilding necessary because we invaded a sovereign nation and blew all that stuff up in the first place?

So here I am, trying to rectify my desire to support the soldiers (who are, for the most part, just doing their jobs) with my complete opposition to the war itself.

current music

more XM Café