What Grinds My Gears

You wanna know what really grinds my gears?

Ok, I stole that from Family Guy, but it seemed the most fitting for this post so I don't feel bad about stealing it, especially since I outright give credit to where I stole it from.

But seriously, do you want to know what really grinds my gears? Anti-war people grind my gears. I will forewarn you that this post might display a little more of the harsh person in me; the one that occasionally enjoys standing on my homemade soapbox, voicing my opinion on some subject (that I feel I know enough about to speak my mind intelligently) usually in response to some idiotic statement made by some stranger that just grinds my gears.

People like Cindy Sheehan and other naysayers who think they understand what they are talking about and really have no idea. Most of them are just jumping on the bandwagon of complaining when they really have no clue what they are talking about or what they are doing. I mean really people, do you have nothing better to do than waste your time supporting the anti-war effort that will probably never accomplish anything?

My outburst on this comes from something that I ran across on the Internet yesterday. You see, I have been checking other soldier blogs while writing my own and a while back, I came across a wonderful blog that all should read. www.afemalesoldier2.com or click the link to the right "A Female Soldier's Story."

It is written by a female soldier; she's a mother, a wife, and an Army medic in the 101st Airborne Division. I have been reading her posts and following her website for the past few weeks, relating to how much her feelings on deployment are much the same as mine. Yesterday, I checked in on her site again, where she had written her final stateside post. She has left for Iraq and I wish her and her unit the best. What grinds my gears are the comments left by some people after this post.

While most of the posts are extremely supportive and encouraging - others read like this:

"Amanda" writes:

"Do you not feel guilty that you are helping in the killing of innocent Iraqis - what did they do to deserve what has happened to them? You can always choose not to go.
As for prayers and sympathy to your family - forget it! And when you get back and realise all the death and destruction (which you helped to cause) is a complete waste - dont say you have not been warned."

As well as - "I know freedom isnt free - but as long as its the Iraqis that are paying the price in lost lives, I suppose thats ok. . . . you went to Vietnam to stop the spread of communism because that was the big fear back then. But, you lost the war, and it still did not make any difference - the politicians lied to you then and they are lying again. Our baby-killing soldiers are continuing to die for nothing."

Plus this - "If you think you are doing an important job for your country, just look at how much you or your family will get compensated for your death or injury. Now tell me the President thinks what you are doing is important. Our country needs idiots like you so we can over-run other countries and take their natural resources."

This - "Go ahead, waste your life, just like so many other young people have done in Iraq and Vietnam. As for Bush's "good vs evil" speech - well, this is the same guy who told us about WMD, etc, so why would you believe him now."

And the best one yet - "I'm not anti-war - I'm anti-killing- people-based-on-a-lie. I'm also pro-women's rights, which the women in Iraq will not get. As for 25 million oppressed people, are we talking about South and Central Americans who are living under brutal right-wing dictators who were installed by the US? Be proud of yourself when you see women in Iraq now forced to stay in their homes because of the religious zealots you helped put in power."

"Christians for Cheap Oil" write: (How very not Christian of them I think.)

"Who cares how you, as a soldier feels, our great leader and the other politicians dont! And, when you come home with psychological problems from seeing young lives shattered (hopefully yours wont be one of them) dont expect much help from the army. Well, go off and do your duty so we can continue to have cheap oil and our leaders can get richer."

Ok, seriously folks. Idiots. I just want to ask these people if they are retarded, because they are obviously about as ignorant as a person can get.

First of all, if you are so all about being against this conflict, then talk about this conflict. Don't hide the fact that you have no intelligent argument to stand on by bringing up side issues that have nothing to do with Iraq.

Second, why don't you base your argument in fact instead of some crap that you heard from Michael Moore who distorts the truth more than a kaleidoscope distorts your vision.

Third, and what really got me going yesterday, is the fact that these idiots have to take a soldier's website and graffiti it with their idiotic statements. I mean please, this is a place to post your comments. It is not designed for "Amanda" to argue back and forth with every other comment because she feels the need to always get the last word in.

Fourth, if you anti-war people hate it so much, move to Canada, or France, or Germany, or maybe even Iran or any one of dozens of countries in the Middle East. I am sure they would welcome you there if you are so into supporting oppression and abuse and genocide. I hear it can be quite popular in other parts of the world while it obviously is not here in America.

Fifth, which really goes along with #4, if you have such an earth-shattering revelation to state, get your own damn website. Or are you afraid that no one will visit it?

Folks, being a soldier isn't easy. It doesn't provide the luxury of second-guessing every order given and of putting all decisions to a vote. It is a job that thousands of people choose to sign up for each year because they believe in our country, in our history and in our freedom. It is something that very few people have the intestinal fortitude to do and thank God there are people who do it, when the majority of Americans just reap the benefits of a strong military force.

I'm not going to even debate whether or not we "should" be in Iraq. The fact is that we are there, we have started something and we need to finish it. Do you anti-war people ever stop and think about how devastating it would be for the people of Iraq if we just up and left tomorrow? Please, the good people, the majority that support the Coalition, would be crushed, just as they were before under Saddam. It doesn't matter how we got there - you don't stop putting out a fire because it should have never started in the first place.

One more thing for "Amanda" - I hope that in the future your family doesn't get caught in some natural disaster somewhere where you end up with no food, no water, no fuel, no shelter, and no transportation because the only people that are coming to help you are those "baby-killing soldiers" that you seem to be so fond of. What will you do?

Like I always say, "Everybody hates a cop until they need one." The same appears to go for you anti-war protestors when it comes to soldiers as well.

Moving Closer

This deployment has been on my mind twenty-four/seven since I first posted. It is impossible to talk about everything that goes through a person's head when faced with this situation, so I won't even attempt it.

I spent the weekend with my unit again and we started out official processing for deployment. Some may know that the unofficial motto of the Army is "hurry up and wait" and it was once again proven to be true this weekend. Starting fresh at 0800 on Friday morning, we stood in formation, then we sat in briefings, then we stood in line to get our files only to move on to numerous processing stations where we again waited in line. Three shots, a cavity filling, an eye test, a blood draw, paperwork processing, and fourteen hours later, I was able to go home. But I didn't.

I missed a memorable law school activity on Friday afternoon to partake in this military processing fun. While my classmates were bonding and competing Friday afternoon, I was sitting in a dentist's chair. And not just any old dentist chair mind you, a mobile dental trailer dentist's chair. It's not everyday that one gets a cavitiy filled in a converted semi-trailer that has now become a mobile dental office. What an experience is all I can say. At least the dentist was cute, but that didn't seem to make it much better, it still hurt and would only be more painful when the novocaine wore off later.

We were released at 2230 hours, for you non-military folk, that's 10:30 p.m. I took a friend from my unit, a medic who will be deploying with me, to the evening's law school party where we were looking for beer to numb the toothache pain. I thought it would be fun to socialize with my law friends, but it isn't like it used to be and I wish it was. As hard as I tried to talk to friends about the semester and their lives, it is often like trying to make conversation with the stranger you happen to sit by on an airplane. Every once in a while you find a common topic that you both have a story about, but for the most part, it's just awkward and you can't find the right time to walk away. As hard as I tried to have a good time, my conversations kept turning back to the medic about the day, about our training, about our mission and about what crazy trouble we could possibly get into while deployed.

My civilian friends try to understand, but it is hard. Talking to military people is much like starting law school. You see, in the beginning of law school, you feel like people are speaking Greek. There is a whole new language to understand and it takes a while to adopt it and figure it out. The military is much the same way. It is full of acronyms and sayings that your average civilian will never know and it also consists of a bizarre sense of humor that one can only understand because they have military traning experiences. There essentially is a military language and some will never learn to speak it.

My husband was deployed for OIF I in January 2003 and returned fifteen months later. We had only been married for four months when he left and by the time he came home, we had been apart longer than we had known each other. I'm not going to paint a pretty picture of the perfect reunion, because there wasn't one. We tried very hard to return to "normal" but the secret was that "normal" didn't exist. He was home for only a few months when I left for law school and we again spent more time apart than we did together. The stress of his homecoming and our adjusting coupled with the stress of school and my new friends made things very difficult for us. I often thought maybe it would be easier to go on with my "new" life and just walk away from what I couldn't fix. Law school can be very stressful and it is very time consuming. It was very easy for me to be selfish and only relate to my friends here rather than try to keep things together that were hundreds of miles away, even though I didn't feel good about it. I went back home for the summer and got alerted in June for my deployment which leads me to where I am today.

My husband does not talk about Iraq. It is such a rare occasion for him to speak about it that when he does I don't say a word. I want to ask questions and I want to know but I am afraid that I will disrupt the random story and I will lose my chance at even hearing that small part of his life. The year and a half that he was gone is lost to us. It is a time where he was in another world and I was in limbo waiting for him to return to our life.

When I wrote my first post on deployment, I hesitated on whether or not to send it to him. I was afraid he would be offended or that it would be perceived in a manner that I did not intend. My fears were proved false when he called to tell me that it nearly brought him to tears. He told me that after reading my thoughts, he finally feels like he can talk to me about his experience, he finally sees that I get it and that soldiers really can relate to one another even when their missions are different, their experiences are very much the same.

I feel like maybe now we can find out "normal" again.

The medic and I laughed about what our mission will be like and we laughed about how much fun the group of soldiers will be to deploy with, but at the end of the night it was just the two of us standing in an empty parking lot talking about much more serious deployment thoughts that surely must plague us all, even though most will never admit to them.

The long and short of it boils down to something very simple which only needs a brief explanation.

When my husband was deployed, both of my sisters were as well. While he did not write but one time when he was gone, my sisters provided regular stories of their experiences and thoughts while they were over there. i recall a special email from my oldest sister when she was in Kuwait that discussed the simple things she was learning. Things like appreciating a sunrise in Kuwait and realizing that she can live without television. That a simple life could be a good life as long as you are surrounded by good people and have a good attitude and hope that all bad will pass and make you a better person in the end.

I too have a list of items running through my head and most of them are also running through the medic's head as we prepare to take on this deployment. Our parking lot conversation didn't consist of the fun day and the great people, it consisted of our fears of what the future might bring.

While I am excited for this experience and I know it will be positive in the end, I have many fears that I am sure countless other soldiers have as well when facing their opportunity to go to war. I am afraid that I might never come home. I am afraid of seeing things that most people will never see and I am afraid of how they will affect me and how the memories will stay with me forever. I am afraid of losing friends over there and I am equally as afraid that I will lose friends at home for different reasons. I am afraid of injury, both to me and to others.

I am afraid that my husband and I will again struggle to find the "normal" that we only just found again.

To be perfectly honest, I am afraid to write this blog in general. It's not the fear that I will violate OPSEC by discussing things I shouldn't, but it is the fear of knowing that I am affording others the opportunity to know my thoughts, which often may seem irrational like knee-jerk reactions to something that cannot be controlled. I am afraid people may think less of me when they see how I view things.

But most of all I am afraid of coming home a different person than I am today. I am afraid that the new person might not be a better one than I am right now and I do not want that.

I guess only time will tell in the end and that no matter what I and others may fear, the fact still remains that we have a mission to do and we will do it to the best of our ability and hopefully God will be with us and we will all come home safe and sound to our families where we will experience positive transitions back to the civilian life.