It was a sight that you rarely see these days at a US airport: An entire family at the gate saying goodbye to a loved one before he boarded the plane. But in this case, I guess the TSA made an exception, because the loved one was a soldier returning to Iraq.
We were in the Orlando airport, headed to Atlanta. I watched as the soldier, a big, friendly looking guy dressed in full camouflage, hugged his wife and 3 sons tightly. The littlest one (maybe 3), called out, "Don't die, Daddy!"
I got on the plane, and as luck would have it, the soldier got on the plane and took the seat next to me. He was wiping tears from his face as he sat down.
"That's the toughest part," he said.
The soldier and I struck up a conversation. Obviously, he was a bit upset at going back to Iraq. He was in the Florida National Guard and had been home on leave. He said a lot in the few minutes that we conversed.
This was his third tour in Iraq, and he said he had 7 months to go "before I'm done with war for good." He said he was almost killed just prior to Christmas. His vehicle was hit by an IED and he lost his driver and one other person. He was also involved in an incident around New Year's where a driver of a truck refused to stop for a convoy that included him and several other vehicles, including Iraqi police. The convoy had no choice but to fire on the vehicle, which blew up. Apparently, it was loaded with explosives.
The soldier said he was assigned to a city near the northern border of Iraq. He told me that they took small arms fire "every day". He said that morale was very bad, and that anyone who appeared in one of those press briefing dog-and-pony shows was "lying" if they said morale among the troops was good.
He said that since the push to secure Baghdad, violence in other areas of the country has increased dramatically, except in the Kurdish areas. He said that he recently witnessed a large convoy of vehicles with construction equipment and the like headed for the Syrian border. The contractors hired to do reconstruction jobs were leaving; snipers were picking them off at construction sites and they couldn't stand it any more.
We talked about the chlorine bomb situation a little, but I got the sense that this was just another thing to deal with. For someone who faces small arms fire and IEDs every day, I guess one more threat isn't that big of a deal.
He also said that his comrades were very confused, because the "rules of engagement" kept changing. It seems as if the soldiers are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they engage a potential threat with too much force, they face court martial. If they don't stop a threat, then they risk their own lives. I got the sense that there wasn't much happening in Iraq that made a lot of sense to the soldiers.
This soldier said that everyone he knew in the service just wanted to come home. But he said it didn't seem likely, because the Bush Administration has "no exit strategy. None." I took that to mean that even if somehow it was decided that the troops should come home tomorrow, there is no plan in place on how to accomplish that goal. And moving 150,000 or so troops and their equipment seems to me to be a pretty formidable task without a plan.
The flight was brief and as we left the plane, I wished him well. When he got off the plane, he was looking for someone to tell him how to catch his next flight -- first to Germany, then Kuwait, then Iraq.
As I walked through the airport to catch my flight home, I saw his comrades, moving in ones and twos, dressed in their uniforms, moving closer to Iraq with each step.