The War I Always Wanted

       Daily Kos is my online home, and I’ve made dozens of friends here over the last year.  You may not know it, but you guys have given me the ability to really get my psychological sea legs back under me after spending two years in combat and another two years writing about it.  You’ve taught me modern politics and re-ignited a fire I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back after my return from Iraq.  So I credit you all with giving me back my aggressiveness—and swagger—as I attempt weekly to go after the traitors who got us into this war in Iraq.  And for that, I thank you.
       Thus, it is with an anxious sense of anticipation that I present to you my now-available war memoir, The War I Always Wanted:

     

       I started writing this book in June 2004, less than four months after I left the Army.  When I began the work, everything was still fresh and still pretty raw.  There was one overarching goal for me in writing the book, however: I wanted to use my own story to tell how many of us in the 101st Airborne felt during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And I did this through the telling of my own war stories.
       More than anything, it’s a story of how I got to where I am today—here on Kos, and working for VoteVets.org.  It’s essentially the story of how, over the course of a few years, I metamorphosed from a gung ho young soldier into The Angry Rakkasan you see now.  
       So, at this point, I’d like to share with you the prologue:

       First there were mountains. Then there was a desert. And now, sometimes, there are flashbacks. Not full-blown flashbacks, I guess. They're more like super memories--and they creep up on me. Stopped in Dallas traffic (behind one of the gun trucks) I glance out of the window of my car and see business people (Iraqis) standing on the street corner (wearing dishdashas) talking (waving at me) on cell phones. My eyes instinctively scan for weapons. Listening to a commercial on the radio, I hear a man's voice (one of my squad leaders) selling ("1-6, he's gone down again, over") new cars. I come home to write, and the chair (green army cot) on which I'm sitting makes a familiar creaking noise as I shift (toss and turn), and it reminds me of trying to sleep. Other times it is the craggy earth at nine thousand feet under my worn combat boots. The weight of a Kevlar helmet on my head. The barrels of burning shit. It all sort of blends together.
       Sometimes when I look back, I think, "Man, I spent over two years dealing with those fucking wars, and I never saw any real combat--not the way I always envisioned it as a kid at least." I never stormed a beach. I never ducked tracer fire while parachuting onto an enemy-held airfield. And my best buddy didn't die in my arms talking about his mom and his girl back home, either. Where I was, everything was so much more vague than that.
       But I did watch a two-thousand-pound bomb strike the earth less than thirty yards from me and my platoon. In army-speak, that was what we would call a "significant emotional event." And I did shoot some guys--even killed one of them. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was a pretty big deal to me. I saw soldiers bending under the stress of guerilla war in mountains and in cities. I met Iraqi translators who walked the thin line between patriotism and treason every day, for months on end. I ate in their homes. I watched their neighbors call them traitors. I could have easily died at least half a dozen times that I know of. I was scared that I was going to die a hundred times that number.
       The idea that war changes people is clichéd but it's true. Going into it, I always thought I'd be above that--immune to it, too well trained for it to affect me, too professional. I thought we were beyond all that Vietnam/posttraumatic stress shit. But now I'm in on it.
       I have been enlightened.
       Now I fear that part of me will always be there--and that that part of me is never coming home. Ever. I'm sure my body will be here, and I'll walk around work or school talking to people, smiling and telling them what it was like and what I'll be doing this weekend and so on. But I'm just not really here.
       Instead, I am somewhere else. I'm wearing what has now become old-fashioned desert camouflage. I am thousands of miles from home, in a strange, dusty land where the people speak a language I don't understand. And I am carrying a gun.
       I wonder if it will always be this way.

       I wrote that passage in late 2005—and I’m still wondering.