Iraq
10:58 AM
Over the past two years we all have read about and heard about the War in Iraq. For me, I haven’t known anyone closely who is or has been over there. My dad’s former co-worker’s son was shot there. He is OK now and ready to go back. A kid younger than me that graduated from my high school was killed there. That is as close as I’ve felt it. I haven’t had a brother or sister, or cousin, or best friend fighting for us over there. And because of that, I think may have grown desensitized to the news. Every day we hear about a new bombing or suicide attack. When it comes on, I hear it, but it doesn’t hit me. I seem to look at it like any other news story. I look, then I flip.
On Tuesday, someone I have met and someone close to my family shipped out for Iraq. I think he’ll end up north of Baghdad. He is the son in law of one of my mom’s best friends. In the civilian world, he is a financial planner. He’s part of the Guard and in Iraq we think he will have contact with the Iraqi people. That may be wrong, but that is what we think.
This is the first time it’s hit me. Here is this guy with a wife and two young kids. He has a job. He has a house, car, and insurance payments. He has a life like most of us in the civilian world. He has to drop everything on a few days notice and is told he is going to a war zone. I can’t imagine the feeling.
Now he will be in the area where the daily shootings and bombings will be. Now when I see the news, I think I’ll listen a little harder. When I see the paper, I’ll look a little closer. As I will tell him in an email shortly, we wish him success and safety.
It stinks that is takes me two years and so many deaths to finally realize that there are thousands of people like him over there. People with friends and families and jobs and kids. It’s weird how our mind works. For most of us, it doesn’t affect us directly, we don’t worry about it. I am not sure if that’s how it was in the World War’s. From what I know about Vietnam things were very confusing. But I know that today we go about our business.
I guess the point of this is that whether you are for the war or not, you have to be for the people on the ground over there. They are risking everything for our country. They are risking everything because that is their job. I pissed and moaned about my cushy sales job. He has put some things in perspective for me. When you see the news or read the paper, take a second and realize the dominoes that fall in a life when someone is hurt or killed. Then think, pray, or reflect and wish them success and safety.