Most nights are uneventful. There have been very few mortar attacks on the base except for last night. Since one of my supervisors is on vacation I’ve been asked to fill in and provide tech support for a couple hours a night at a trailer compound that we provide internet service to. The incoming alarm went off while struggled to figure out how to get some guy’s PC laptop to recognize the signal, so we casually made our way to the bunker outside trailer. I can’t help feeling like a teenager at his first school dance huddled with strangers in a bunker. One guy was still on his cell phone, most likely a call to the states. When you’re over forty and a civilian, what would possess you to choose to be here? Like my boss Charles says, “There are three kinds of people here. Soldiers who pretty much don’t have a choice, people trying to make enough money to pay their debt, and guys that want to live one more hurrah.” There seemed to be no attack. Routinely we hear, “This is the command post. All clear. All clear.” But even that was missing. I didn’t want to wait for the official “all clear” so I walked back into the trailer.
Later, after watching a movie in my hooch, Brooklyn Rules with Alec Baldwin – set in Bayridge, Brooklyn – I shut the lights off and attempted to make myself comfortable enough to fall asleep. I hurt my back after playing basketball about three weeks ago. They have an indoor fieldhouse here and it was a good five game run. We lost the fifth game. The next morning I could barely stand up straight and even now I still have a little nagging pain, which makes it hard to sleep. I could hear an explosion while trying to fall asleep, like I said, rare these days, and I told myself it must have been a controlled detonation. Of course it was a controlled detonation because there was an attack hence the incoming alarm, there wasn’t any explosions because it hit but didn’t detonate, so the EOD guys were just doing their jobs.
Last week I spoke to my mother on the phone and she put my younger cousin on to talk with me. He praised me, the job I’m doing here and how he was proud of me. I understood what he was saying and how he felt. I feel the same way about the soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines I see here in the same way I respect what my cousin had to offer me. Regardless of their reasons I respect their decisions whether history should judge such decisions or actions good or bad.
“… men refuse to admit that all those things which men defended in former ages with the sacrifice of life and happiness were nothing but errors; it is even said, perhaps, that they were degrees of the truth. But what is really meant is that when a man has honestly believed in something, and has fought and died for his faith, it would really be too unjust if he had only been inspired by an error.” Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human
In 1993, I visited my daughter in Santa Cruz and we drove to San Francisco, and marched in a protest against this war. That day I took a very small role to play. Five years later I still don’t believe we, the United States of America, with our collective responsibility should have attacked Iraq. And I don’t see my job here as having anything to do with protecting Americans, their lives, national security, access to natural resources or way of life. Not on the moral tip. My hope, when I hope, is that my work helps Iraqis wake up one day and live at least as well as they did when Saddam was last in power – people had jobs, and electricity and didn’t fear suicide bombings, ethnic violence and extremists – even if the probability of such a truth is low.
My friend from Sadr City told me he was in a car accident last night. He said someone was following him and ran him off the road, flipping his car. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Luckily he only had a sore neck and a totaled car to be upset about. I couldn’t help thinking the accident wasn’t an accident when he said the guy was following him.
