(no subject)
I was sitting in an airport lounge today when a young man wearing an army uniform sat down next to me. A few minutes later a stream of fellow soldiers walked by led by older men in USO shirts who were applauding. Pretty soon we were all were applauding. After the applause had died down, I leaned over and asked the guy next to me (a stupid question) whether or not he was a part of the crew walking buy. He said he was and that all of them were returning from 2 weeks of leave. I asked him where they were headed. He said Baghdad.
I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask - whether he'd been there before, how long he thought he'd be there this time around, whether he was optimistic about the situation - but realizing the guy was on the tail end of two weeks of leave, I figured it'd be better to just let him enjoy the atrium of the Atlanta airport in peace. When he got up to leave a few minutes later, I managed a "good luck".
After getting so fired up on Tuesday about the Democratic backdown, I had the chance to talk to a fellow Democrat with a brother heading to Fallujah. She was pessimistic about the wisdom of a troop withdrawal plan. Although she wanted the war to end, she thought a timeline had the potential to put troops (including her brother) in an awkward spot. We had a calm discussion about it, which weirdly made me feel better about what had been a depressing few days for me based (irrationally) on the new Iraq funding bill.
Both of these encounters reminded me of some of the very real hardships the war has wrought and about how little most of us interact with them.
I've struggled to pull some further lesson from this observation, but there really isn't one. I just wanted to remember this day and this week for what I felt for these people. Good luck.
I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask - whether he'd been there before, how long he thought he'd be there this time around, whether he was optimistic about the situation - but realizing the guy was on the tail end of two weeks of leave, I figured it'd be better to just let him enjoy the atrium of the Atlanta airport in peace. When he got up to leave a few minutes later, I managed a "good luck".
After getting so fired up on Tuesday about the Democratic backdown, I had the chance to talk to a fellow Democrat with a brother heading to Fallujah. She was pessimistic about the wisdom of a troop withdrawal plan. Although she wanted the war to end, she thought a timeline had the potential to put troops (including her brother) in an awkward spot. We had a calm discussion about it, which weirdly made me feel better about what had been a depressing few days for me based (irrationally) on the new Iraq funding bill.
Both of these encounters reminded me of some of the very real hardships the war has wrought and about how little most of us interact with them.
I've struggled to pull some further lesson from this observation, but there really isn't one. I just wanted to remember this day and this week for what I felt for these people. Good luck.