Everyone is tired.

 

 

 

it was, of course, a celebration of family and community throughout the weekend and therefore pretty busy socially.  I hung out with Oliver, Snow and Teo, which was fun (Teo is 9 months and it’s really neat seeing his personality coming out.  He is definitely his father’s son, that’s for sure.).  We hung out with Pam and Ryan, who just bought a house.  We hung out with Michael and Vanessa, who just got engaged.  

 

Everyone is growing, everyone is moving, everyone is an adult.

 

Pretty much, dude!  It’s a great thing to see, an odd thing to admit and something to think about.

 

Of course, when we are together it’s pretty easy to forget that we are growing older--which is fine, this is our way, I guess.

 

 

A few weeks ago, at the worst club in the Dominican Republic, I was hanging out with a fighter pilot.  (The club was so bad I actually climbed a ladder into the DJ booth to see if I could figure out how to get some music going, because the entire club, the whole place, was just sitting, watching TV on this massive screen which one would assume is to be used for freaky visuals.)  Now, I knew this guy was a fighter pilot because I had met his friend, the groom’s brother, and the brother had referred to this guy as “Doctor” which was his callsign, and when we asked him what he did, he told us he was a pilot, and when Whit asked him if was involved in the war, he replied yes, and that he couldn’t wait to get back, which was the first time I had ever heard anything like that.

 

 

And he opened up with that, first off, he agreed that we were in an artificially divided country and then talked about why he was happy he was able to be involved.  We talked about it for almost an hour and I swear, the rest of the night, my head was in a tizzy.  Some key points:

 

1 - the thing he hated the most about leaving was that he could no longer protect his friends and other soldiers that he had met.  He fully admitted (as did the other pilot) that his job was comparatively a cinch next to the guys who have to actually work on the ground.  He hated that he was not able to come in and protect these kids.  

 

2 - a lot of the soldiers in Iraq ask their friends and family to send them clothes and toys and other stuff for the kids in Iraq.  Apparently there are quite a few soldiers who are adopting Iraqi kids and bringing them home.  I never heard that before.

 

 

4 - He honestly thinks that Bush and Cheney are amazingly intelligent people.  He thinks that Bush uses this public persona of him being kinda dumb to his advantage, because Bush can just shrug off the criticism so he can just keep focusing on what he wants done.  Bush and Cheney apparently write letters to the soldiers over there to inspire the troops and my friend said they are amazingly well written and coherent.  This was surprising to me, of course, and although I found it hard to believe, I could tell that he felt really strongly about this, that these communications were of value to him and I didn’t feel that it was in my place (or experience, really) to argue that my perception of the two was/is very different.  In fact, through most of the conversation, I mostly listened and asked questions.  He knew where I stood, I told him that I had grave concerns and wanted to know why I should have faith in the mission, as it were, and he did his best to express why he believed it was the right thing. It was a fantastic conversation, non argumentative.  Inspiring, in a way, that we could have it.

 

5 - He was all about the long term.  I suggested that the idea of this being “over” was silly, at least in 3-5 years.  We both agreed that we were looking at decades.  He figured it would take 20 years to stabilize the Middle East, or at least Iraq and Afghanistan, but he was really just worried about China.  He was saying how China is just biding their time while the US spends all of its resources trying to get this mess cleaned up, then China would just become the next superpower.  While I didn’t get the sense that he thought China was an actual threat militarily, I got the sense he would be surprised if they tried something.  He was concerned about what the world would look like 100 years from now.  I asked him, “So basically, the 90’s were the last time things would be chill?”  And he said he thought so, that things were basically screwed from here on out for the next century or so.  Which I think my friend Zak said once, too, and Zak and this guy have very, very little in common beside this particular feeling!

 

6 - I asked him what the hell people in the US could do.  Like, they had to know that even commie liberals like myself who don’t respect the war respect the kids who are dying for it.  He said that all the soldiers there want are for people to live their lives.  He remarked on how he had been all over the world and realized that what the US has is very special, very unique and that it was, to him and to the military, very important that that “way of life” continue.  He was so earnest when he said that, I just nodded and looked into the beer I was drinking for a bit.

 

7 - And why him?  He apparently had a great uncle who was in Iwo Jima and had always been inspired by it.  He had grown up in Boulder, no one in his immediate family was in the military, but he was just drawn to it.  He said he thought about the teenagers who fought in World War II, and he just couldn’t believe what they had done and he just wanted to contribute in that way.  He actually got choked up when he talked about this, and I kinda pulled the conversation to a close a bit after that.

 

It was a great conversation and it has stayed with me, obviously.  While I am inspired and hopeful that I was able to meet such a thoughtful person in this warrior class, and while I am heartened to hear that so many of our soldiers are such a good people and going into this with such drive, I am furious that they are there in the first place and am more convinced than ever that not only has the administration squandered a single opportunity to unite this planet (and our country), they have also squandered the lives of our military, those who are, in a way, the most fundamental of ambassadors, those who make our might.  They have made us weak, and I cannot abide by my friend’s reasoning that we are fighting them there so we don’t fight them here.  I don’t agree. The more we fight over there, the more we lose everywhere else.

 

But, hey, that’s what’s so great, right?  That we can have these differences of opinion, and despite what the Right wing wants people to believe, we can discuss without fighting, without hating, without shouting...and with respect.  I just find it ironic I had it in the Dominican Republic, which is on the same side of Haiti, where some truly horrific things have been and are happening, just a few hours south of our country.

 

Whew.

 

All right!  This has taken awhile to write. I am gonna post it and get out of here.  Have a great weekend.