George F. Will charges Dems with Manicheism

In a Washington Post op-ed piece entitled "Waiting for Straight Talk" (Sun., Jan 20) George F. Will writes "There are decent, intelligent people who believe that equity and efficiency or both are often served by government setting prices. In America, such people are called Democrats." Putting aside Will's obvious condescension -- those of us who believe in evolution and human-induced global climate change subtly deride the nation's Evangelical science-deniers with the same language -- we should look instead at his criticism of Democratic over-reliance on Government regulation of markets. Such a charge is hard to deny. Dems tend to expect a bit too much from the government when it comes to making sure everyone gets paid the wage they want and not the wage they deserve, or the wage "the market" can sustain. "Living Wage" campaigns across the nation over the past decade illustrate the power of misplaced hope to motivate the masses.

During my first year in Charlottesville, VA, University of Virginia students mounted a large and long-lasting protest/propaganda campaign for a "Living Wage" for University employees. With the backing of the University Democrats, the "Living Wage" folks, decked out in t-shirts and buttons, flooded the school with flyers and posters demanding $10.72/hr for all entry-level employees. The "movement" culminated in a round-the-clock occupation of the President's office building, with students camping out on the front lawn and encouraging passersby to "Honk for a Living Wage!" University employees were conspicuously absent from the demonstrations, and, as it turned out, from the Living Wage Campaign's meetings as well. Perhaps they did not want to lose their jobs, or perhaps they weren't as outraged as the students themselves.

I remember being approached by one student organizer who asked me, "hey, would you be willing to get arrested?" The question struck me as odd, so odd that I actually listened to what the kid had to say. He and some of the more hardcore Living Wagers were going to sit-in until the cops came to arrest them, he told me, and their arrests would surely cause enough public outrage that President Casteen would have to compromise. "Well, no, actually I'm not willing to get arrested," I told him, "at least not for this." And, sure enough, about a dozen of the stalwart protesters wound up in the Charlottesville City Jail for a few hours one night in late spring. I've always wondered how much their protest cost the city courts. As for the "Living Wage" itself, it died away without the President's approval. Where did the number $10.72 come from, many students wanted to know. Turns out the Living Wagers borrowed the amount from a similar protest that took place in Washington DC. President Casteen praised the students' commitment to social justice, lamented their unfortunate decision to take their protest too far, and encouraged future protesters to remember that a "Living Wage" in DC and a "Living Wage" in Charlottesville are two different things. UVa employees, Casteen reminded us, begin several dollars above the state's minimum wage.

The "Living Wage" hoopla was one of my first experiences of political organizing -- if we might call it that -- on the local level. I was impressed by the entire event, especially by the students' ability to get the entire city fired up about the issue, on one side or the other. But the most powerful lesson I took away from the debacle was a bit less inspirational: it was the first time I was ever embarrassed by the confluence of idealism and over-zealousness. Well, maybe not.

Later in the article, in which Will accuses McCain of attempting to control political speech and markets (especially the pharmaceutical market) in non-Republican ways, Will recounts, "In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is 'the power of the pharmaceutical companies.' When Mitt Romney interjected, 'Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,' McCain replied, 'Well, they are.'" Again Will throws the apostate McCain to the Dems, but this time with less simple scorn and a bit more vitriol, one might even say unselfconscious over-zealousness: "There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichean simplicities. That place is the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream."

Will's charge is laughable at best. In recent years our Republican President has presided over an expansion of Manichean American rhetoric not seen since the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy. I doubt that even Richard Nixon would sling words like "evil" and "bad" around as recklessly as Bush has. Childish, over-simplifying phrases like "Axis of Evil" and "bad men" belong in comic books, not State of the Union Addresses. Worst of all, such rhetoric proves that the Bush administration holds the American public in very low esteem; only an idiot could swallow that kind of Manichean mumbo-jumbo without retching. Bush has presided over intellectual regression on a national level, refusing to engage in the sort of international diplomatic dialogue that acknowledges world leaders -- even enemies -- as sovereign heads of states that represent complex viewpoints and are woven into a complicated fabric of global issues, dilemmas, and geopolitical forces. Were we to follow George Bush with unblinking allegiance, we would have to agree that the world is made up of "good" people and nations and "bad" people and nations, and we would have to acknowledge "evil" as a real, unitary force in world politics. Manichean theology rests on a notion of an eternal struggle on Earth between "good" and "evil." When it comes to espousing such absurdly over-simplified notions of the world -- notions which, unfortunately, gain ground with seemingly intellectual work like Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations -- it's Republicans, not Dems, who have anointed themselves Masters of the Universe.

Trip to Colombia.

I've just returned from a three week trip to Colombia. I travelled around the city of Cali, home to more than three million Colombians, and the mountainous province of Quindío. Quindío contains some of Colombia's most beautiful mountain terrain. The lush hills are home to hundreds of small coffee plantations and plantain farms. The numerous valleys -- which must have been all but impenetrable before the advent of the automobile and modern roads -- are perfect for horse farms and cozy haciendas. The rugged terrain would be perfect for the guerilla, but for some reason which isn't quite clear to me, the guerilla have never found a foothold in Quindío. The military presence is strong, and, according to some of the people I was traveling with, the local identity of the "paisas" -- descendants of tough basque settlers -- works to ward of guerilla recruitment techniques. A successful coffee region for nearly a century, Quindío's citizens have not suffered the mass poverty suffered in other regions, where small farmers turned to illegal production of coca either by will or by force, and where youth respond to guerilla promises out of desperation or are conscripted at gunpoint. Now Quindío has a thriving tourism industry that attracts foreigners from Latin America and the broader world and also large numbers of Colombians with disposable income. In Quindío's small towns, one of which houses the national amusement park (Parque del Café), amidst advertisements for rafting trips, Senderos Ecologicos, and zipline canopy tours, it's easy to forget the reason for the large military presence. It's easy to forget that elsewhere in the country soldiers from other units patrol similar towns looking for signs of the guerilla. Other Colombian soldiers follow the sendero ecologico into ambush after ambush in the regions of Colombia where the guerilla remains strong, in many places stronger than the army.

In the city of Cali there are signs of a good deal of economic development. Notably, three or four enormous home improvement centers. Think Home Depot, but twice as big, so big that you can drive your car through the aisles (and you're supposed to, half of the store is drive-in-drive-out loading). There are also a slew of new shopping districts and beautiful restaurants designed with innovative architecture and boasting creative menus. Clearly there are a few thousand people with money to drop on new windows and tile flooring as well as chic dining. But what about everyone else? The slums are incredible, shanty towns lining dirt streets that turn to impassable mud with the first hint of rain. The overwhelming majority of Cali's residents live in poverty, and drug money offers one of the only escapes. Cali's small cadre of bourgeois citizens do not attempt to hide the fact that most of the signs of development are the result of trickle-down drug economics. The "traquetos" -- junior level narcotraficantes -- have a lot of cash on hand, and they're the ones keeping business afire at the city's shopping malls and discotechs. But narcotraffic is not sustainable, and certainly not a foundation for development. What will happen when narcotraffic crashes (if indeed it does crash)? Apparently Colombia is on the verge of signing a free-trade agreement with the United States. Perhaps free-trade will offer enough growth in the labor sector and sustainable manufacturing foundations to regrow the Colombian economy from the ground up. But the broad failures of NAFTA -- particularly for Mexicans -- do not offer much room for hope. Colombians are enjoying this period of growth, and well they should after more than a decade of total stagnation and paralyzing urban violence. But no one is without doubts, and no one will be surprised when dark days return.

Response to Mr. Karl Rove's Newsweek editorial

Dear Mr. Rove,

Supporters of your new Newsweek column have levied a serious charge against readers who stand in the way of truth by "attacking the messenger as opposed to the message." Let me say this: I'm fine with that. The Bush administration has made a habit of attacking individuals who represent positions contrary to their own, to the great detriment of the United States. One Valerie Wilson comes to mind rather quickly. Jaques Chirac and the entire nation of France surface out of the mire of this seven-year blame game too. I bet many representatives and voters on both sides of the aisle wish they'd listened to the French "message" in 2003: avoid war at all costs. Instead, most of the nation swallowed your lies, Mr. Rove, and chose to malign France and the French president while chomping happily on "freedom fries." Now look at us.

I served in your war, Mr. Rove, as a Combat Engineer with the United States Army. I went to Iraq believing that we had made a grave mistake, that we had not planned our mission thoroughly enough, and that our post-9-11 decision to spurn our global allies and "go it alone" cost our international credibility dearly. I care about things like international credibility, Mr. Rove, because I understand that our allies are as much a part of our security as the location and activities of Osama bin Laden (who, I might add, was certainly not in Iraq). You know all of these things as well as I do, so I will not refresh your memory.

I will, however, tell you that I went to Iraq with my head held high, because I believed that though we had erred in invading Iraq, we could still manage to bring a better future to the Iraqi people. I very quickly realized the extent of my naïveté. How many airstrips loaded with brand new American SUVs did I have to see (SUVs and pick-up trucks destined for absurdly well-paid Kellogg, Brown & Root contractors, men who collect salaries four-times as large as mine to manage Kurdish and Turkish workers doing jobs soldiers used to do) from the turret of my beat-up old Humvee, or from the bed of the Vietnam-era dump-trucks with which you sent us into combat, before I realized, Mr. Rove, that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with "Terror" or "freedom" or "democracy," and everything to do with profit and political gain?

Oh how you have screwed us, Mr. Rove. But I will not single you out. I know that (almost) the entire nation was behind you, even if only because your management of Mr. Bush's propaganda machine flowed so smoothly. I also know that you were doing a job, and that a man like you could not possibly care about the United States or its future. Sometimes combat soldiers say that war is just a job. Usually it's an attempt to distance themselves from the psychologically and physically brutal consequences of their task. But sometimes it's an honest statement; there are more than a few soldiers in Iraq for whom victory hold no grip over the imagination, and for whom loss is a foregone conclusion. Many among those "professional soldiers of the volunteer army" do not really care one way or the other. Most, however, care quite deeply, unlike you.

Let me ask you a few questions. I know you won't answer them, but I would like to pose them to you anyway (I've been dying for the opportunity since the election campaign in 2004, when you brilliantly organized the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against the combat veteran candidate. I've been trying to forgive the American people ever since for claiming to "support the troops" while simultaneously supporting a presidential candidate and cabinet among whom there are no combat veterans whatsoever, all the while bashing the one man who actually volunteered for combat service. I was the lone Kerry-supporting college-boy in my unit, and I watched the election coverage on Armed Forces TV. You can imagine how much fun that was for me. You can also imagine how impressed I was with your ability to make Bush into a war hero ex nihilo. I have to hand it to you.)

Okay, here goes:

1. Why didn't you and your President listen to General Shinseki when he told you that you would need at least 300,000 troops and at least five years?

2. Why did Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer disband the Iraqi military and bureaucracy, a decision which sent hundreds of thousands of men with military training out into the streets with no money, food, or work, ready fodder for the jihadists who weren't here to receive them immediately, but were there teaching them to build IEDs by the time I arrived in March 2004?

3. Why did your President abandon Afghanistan?

4. Why did you and your President so callously disregard our international allies?

5. Why did you and your President make this war? I want the real answer here. But I know that you and all in your chain of command are too cowardly to tell me. Men are dying for your former boss's strategic failures.

6. When will you own up to it?

We cannot win in Iraq. Even if we "stabilize the region," which is incredibly unlikely, we have killed so many scores of civilians that any claims we make to providing a "better future" for the Iraqis are simply absurd: for over eighty-thousand Iraqis, the future no longer exists. Oh, and eighty-thousand is over one-half the number of Kurds murdered by Saddam. Have we succeeded in bringing justice?

Let's look at some more numbers:

9/11 was the worst "unprovoked" terrorist attack in world history. It is very difficult to imagine another terror attack causing more loss of human life or more destruction of American property. It is also hard to imagine a terror attack striking at more symbolic targets: the Pentagon, the WTC. So far over 4,000 soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we have somehow avenged the deaths of the roughly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks, our vengeance has been worse than Pyrrhic. And how long will it take us to recover the vast sums of money we have thrown into the flames to finance this poorly managed, poorly devised debacle?

This war has destroyed several of my friends. Some have died. Some are recovering from wounds. Still others bear scars that will forever remain unseen, but are no less traumatic. These sacrifices are the job of soldiers to bear. For these sacrifices I seek no retribution and no justice. I do seek answers, because what this war has cost us most of all is an unrecoverable amount of international credibility and a precious share of our national moral fortitude.

Those who truly love this country will remember you, Mr. Rove. But they will not remember you as a patriot. They will remember you as the man who laughed while his country burned, and they will remember you as a man who lied. Just a man who lied, nothing more.

America is a land of opportunity, potential, and forgiveness, Mr. Rove. And I believe that even you, Mr. Rove, have potential to become a real patriot. You can start by using the wonderful opportunity Newsweek has given you to seek the forgiveness of our nation, something you can do by telling the truth.

Now that's not asking too much, is it? Certainly no more than your President has asked of me and every other soldier.

Serve us proudly.

Sappers Lead,
Elliott

A plea from 'Dispatches'

This line comes from Dispatches, Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr's 1978 memoir:

"[The grunts] would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn’t being told for them, that they were going through all this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it."

If that's not a statement of purpose, I don't know what is.

One last look . . .

In July 2005, I walked into my first class at University of Virginia, The Darkside of Hollywood: Film Noir.  Looking around the room at a dozen or so young students, I was nervous.  I felt impossibly far from where I'd just spent the last year of my life and from where most of my thoughts still dwelled.  Four months earlier, I waited on the tarmac for the bird that would carry me home.  The lumbering C-130 finally dropped onto the runway.  I scanned the hazy perimeter, took stock of the thousands of meters of wire I'd pounded in the suffocating summer heat.  Inhaling a last lungful of burning, dusty air, forcing a smile, I turned my back on the Iraqi plains. It was over.  With the drone of the props lulling me to sleep, I wondered about where we would all go, what we would do, what would become of us "back in the world."  I daydreamed the dream that kept me going on every mission, of sitting in an air-conditioned classroom, charged only with the task of learning and building fortifications of knowledge.  Looking at the soldiers strapped in across from me, I realized for the first time I was no longer dreaming.  I was finally on my way back. 

The War Tapes hit Charlottesville.

The War Tapes is a damned ambitious project, as far as documentaries go. The producers handed out cameras to three soldiers -- two sergeants and a specialist -- from a company of New Hampshire Army National Guard infantrymen, then charged them with the duty of recording their tour for posterity. And that's just what they did. The War Tapes brings the day to day fight in Iraq to stateside Chairborne Rangers who want a taste of what war is really about: Shit, boredom, and then more shit.

The "deeply patriotic" Specialist Moriarty rejoins the Guard after a ten year break in service in order to deploy to Iraq. Moriarty, 34, describes his deep sense of loss after 9/11, followed by intense rage and a desire to get even. "I've been called an irresponsible father and and bad husband for going to Iraq," Moriarty confesses, but he feels compelled to take an active role in what he believed to be a war in the name of justice and justified retribution. Moriarty's wife confesses halfway through the film that her husband was a "stay at home dad" (read: unemployed) for about a year before rejoining the Guard. Chronic depression and anger management issues prevented Moriarty from finding employment after downsizing cost him his job as a forklift operator. Joining the Guard helps Moriarty climb out of his depression-- in the months before his deployment, his wife reports, he was calmer than ever, sure of himself and motivated by the idea that he was involved with something bigger than himself. A father of two -- including a young son -- Moriarty remarks upon departure, "Hopefully I'll be someone's hero."

Sergeant Pink and Sergeant Bazzi -- both in their mid-twenties -- possess an intimate understanding of the war's dark nuances and absurd ironies, an awareness lacked by the emotionally unstable Moriarty. The two sergeants are razor sharp: Pink holds a double-major bachelor's degree, Bazzi speaks Arabic. Both men are masters of grunt-style leadership learned nowhere but on the job. In moments of reflection, they are able to partially distance themselves from trauma and overbearing ideology -- what Bazzi derides as "groupthink" -- so that their journals reveal lucid thought attempting to grasp horrifying and surreal images of war. Bazzi's and Pink's contributions to The War Tapes prove Paul Fussell's claim hasn't ceded ground in the 21st century: "the dominant mode of war writing is irony."

From his diary, Pink recites, "Today was the first time I shook a man's hand that wasn't there." If we were to put a break in between "hand" and "that," we'd have a poem on our hands. Ironic poetic reflection characterizes Pink's footage and journal writing; holding the camera in front of his face, using the infrared mode that turns his face a sickly green, Pink tells us, "I had a recurring epiphany: this is happening, and will have a lasting impact for the rest of my life." Later, he describes an argument between soldiers about whether charred human flesh smells more like hamburger or roast beef. And it was a serious argument, Pink insists. Deadly serious. To concede defeat would be to discount the reliability of one's very senses. Smelling is believing.

Pink takes us on a tour of the FOBs "equipment graveyard," where burned-out hulks of M-1 Abrams tanks, Strykers, Humvees, Brads, Marine AMTRACs, and helicopters stretch as far as the eye can see. Each vehicle, Pink reflects, is some son or mother or father or brother or wife who will never see their family again. Looking at the funereal rows of matériel -- more like a mass grave than a junkyard, certainly as full of ghosts -- I can't help thinking about the total waste of it all, wasted life, wasted money, wasted resources, wasted privilege. Each Stryker vehicle costs upwards of 3 million USD. One row of totaled equipment bears an unfathomable pricetag. Uninsurable, totaled goods. And the bodies. Where are they? The DoD releases the names and unit information of service members killed in Iraq, but they keep a pretty tight lip on the wounded. Three of my buddies are in a burn unit in Texas right now recovering from shrapnel and burn wounds sustained when an EFP hit their convoy during an IED search in Baghdad. Their names aren't in any papers. I've looked. Perhaps that's for the best, I don't know. From what my buddies tell me, the American public probably couldn't handle the sight of the mangled, scarred soldiers and marines who populate the San Antonio burn campus, even if they are vibrant and eager to be reassembled into everyday life. As catastrophic as the damage is to U.S. bodies, equipment, and morale, the military keeps rolling.

So do the Kellogg, Brown, & Root convoys escorted by Pink, Bazzi, and Moriarty. Pink fumes as he scans a long line of beat-up, shot-up, defenseless trucks carrying goods to U.S. FOBs. He's worried about their drivers. Moriarty worries, "the priority of KBR making money outweighs our safety," but Pink extends his concern to the "TCN" drivers (Third Country Nationals), who are paid pennies and are more desirable targets than U.S. soldiers because of the logistical importance of their loads. "[TCN drivers] are not worth enough to have any protection," Pink says with no small measure of disgust. Early in the tour an administrative soldier told him not to waste medical equipment on injured TCNs or Iraqis. In his diary, Pink writes, "if he tried to stop me from administering aid . . . I would have slit his throat right there."

Pink supported Bush prior to deployment. The 2004 elections occurred during the soldiers' tour, and while Bazzi claims to be one of maybe 5 guys out of the whole company who didn't vote for Bush, Pink gives no indication that he's changed his stance. Still, he expresses anger at Bush's May 2003 showbiz declaration "major combat operations have ended."

Bazzi loves the Army, but hates the war. He says he joined the active duty Army after high school in order to travel. And travel he did, serving one tour in Bosnia and one in Kosovo. His mother begged him not to join the National Guard, but he did it anyway. Bazzi's mother and father brought Bazzi and the rest of the family to the United States to escape the 1980s resurgence of Civil War in Lebanon. He was 10 years old when the family fled, hence the Arabic proficiency. His parents split up shortly after arriving in the U.S. Bazzi's mother describes a terror scene before the escape when militia fighters fired at the house while Lebanese soldiers returned fire from a family window. Bazzi was a combat veteran well before joining the Army, it seems. We find out after the unit redeploys that he was not yet a U.S. citizen during the tour. The camera follows him to his induction ceremony. Sticking out like a sore thumb in his desert camouflage, among several hundred immigrants, Bazzi doesn't smile when a man on stage pronounces "everyone who has taken the oath" a U.S. citizen. The other new citizens cheer and hug one another. Bazzi just clenches his jaw, glances at the certificate, then walks out.

Perhaps thinking about U.S. intervention in the Lebanese Civil War[s], Bazzi says, "I think any country should be allowed to have its own civil war without anyone stepping in." Of course, if the "coalition of the willing" had not interfered in Iraq, there would be no overt civil war to speak of. But Bazzi's sentiment rings clear nonetheless. His attitude is live and let live, fuck with me and you better have back up. Bazzi is a jokester, so he takes abuse from his platoon mates without a grudge. At one point there is a conspiracy to kill Bazzi. "Today we kill Bazzi," an older sergeant says, "he's a spy." What do the Iraqis ask Bazzi more than anything else? "How did you get a visa to go to the United States?" Bazzi seems aware of his luck, and its happenstance nature, more than any of the other soldiers. "I don't really know," he tells the Iraqis, "my parents got it for me." Eventually Bazzi refuses to translate for the squad. Constantly bearing the bad news to Iraqis -- usually in the form of rigid SOPs -- wears him down. He describes an instance when a superior asked him to tell an Iraqi man that he couldn't cross the street to take his sick child to the hospital because "that side of the street" was off limits to Iraqis from the other side of the street on that particular day. Bazzi listened to the old man's agonizing pleas and finally refused his superior's demand. "I'm not telling him that," he said, then something like "if the general wants to come down here and tell these people why they can't cross the street then he can do it." "We're supposed to be helping these people," Bazzi mutters.

The film contains a good measure of soldier pranks, including an epic battle between a giant emperor scorpion and an equally massive camel spider. Godzilla v. Mothra may very well have been inspired by desert insect fighting circuits. I fought insects and geckos on multiple occasions, but I couldn't get them to take their contenders very seriously. Some of the pranks have a slightly darker undertone. Pink watches an old sergeant working away at a block of wood with a handsaw. "Whatcha doin'?" he asks. "Making a pistol." "Why?" "Because they won't give me one." Then he reads from his journal, something to the effect of, "Point an M-16 at an Iraqi and they won't move an inch. Wave a pistol and they'll take off running. It's what Saddam and his men used to carry." Bazzi gets the biggest laugh of the film while recording a convoy in support of a septic truck. As a deluge of "shit water" streams from the truck, flooding a roadside ditch, Bazzi says, "Whoever said bein' a soldier was all blood and glory forgot about the shit."

Back home, Bazzi ends the film with a sad reflection on the ideological vacuum of 21st century American war: it ends up little more than a way for a bunch of different people to get paid. "I got a paycheck from the war," Bazzi says, "KBR's makin' money . . . Humvee company's makin' money . . . you're makin' money [to the filmmaker]." Facts that don't bring SGT Bazzi, SPC Moriarty, or SGT Pink any satisfaction. Moriarty says, "they could pay me 500,000 and I wouldn't go back." Bazzi says, "every soldier wants to go to combat," like football players want to play football-- cheers as the Middle East-bound plane takes off from Ft. McGuire, NJ demonstrate this fact plainly enough. But, Bazzi adds later, the "bad thing about the Army is you can't pick your war."

Mementos and Gratitude.

A young former Marine artilleryman came to a meeting of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society last Friday night to promote a screening of the The War Tapes, a documentary about the year-long deployment of three New Hampshire guardsmen. Coincidentally, I planned to present a poem about Iraq to the Society that evening. I looked around the room as the man spoke, wondering if the members of the Society were listening patiently, interestedly, or if they were just appearing to do so in the interest of decorum. I wondered if perhaps they were thinking, “who the hell is this guy and what is he doing at our meeting.” The young man told a brief story about the IED blasts that left him partially deaf and a victim of PTSD. “What happens to me,” he said, “is that I have trouble falling asleep.” He stood awkwardly at the back of the hall after presenting his speech, handing out flyers and nervously accepting the “thanks” of several Society members. “It always makes me feel weird when people say thank you,” I told him. He smiled, “yeah man, I mean, it’s just a job.” I wanted to tell him no, it’s much more than a job. But I stuck to my original sympathy: I don’t like to be thanked either. Acknowledged, yes. Thanked, no.

I walked toward the screening room tonight running late and feeling slightly apprehensive. I had a pocketful of flyers advertising the blog and the documentary-in-process. What would these people think of my dedication if I showed up late? Not to worry: only three people showed up for the screening. There were about thirty chairs lined up before a projection screen. The Marine – Matt’s his name – was showing pictures from his deployment to a lone attendee. Well, I thought, at least this guy’s here. When Matt left the room to set up the DVD player the other gentleman extended a hand across the aisle to me. I don’t remember his name. Somehow the name Jefferson entered our chat. “Jefferson was a good man,” the guy said. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m glad he founded my university anyway.” The guy replied, “Jefferson was an early enemy of central banking, and that’s what got us into Iraq and every other war for that matter.” “I don’t know what got us there,” I responded – choosing to hold off further commentary until I had a good picture of where this guy was coming from – “but I’m sure I have no idea what we should do now.” The guy had answers for me. “You know what I think?” “No, I don’t,” I replied. “It’s the illuminati. Ever since 1913. The Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. Central bankers, the Federal Reserve. They got their hands in everything, like 9/11, it was a total inside job.” Then he asked me, “do you believe that?” I said, “not exactly, no,” wondering if he was watching me write down everything he said.

“We’ll just give it a few more minutes, a few of my people had labs to turn in and stuff.” I could tell Matt was disappointed that only two people showed up. I thought of all the people Friday night taking his flyers with such gratitude. “I don’t even know how to say thank you for what you’ve done for us man. I’m just so grateful to all of you guys.” To their credit, four o’clock on Monday isn’t the most opportune time to get out of the office or the library. “My heart just goes out to all of you guys.” I’ve heard that one before. Sometimes older women say, “you’re all my sons.” One woman whose son died in a car accident told me, “you’re all my sons, and everytime one of you gets hurt or dies I feel like my own son is dying all over again.” I felt like she meant it. I could tell by the way her eyes drifted far away from anything in the room. Oddly enough, she was selling me a hand-blown glass lamp made by a PTSD counselor. I think that’s what got us on the topic of Iraq.

After the film, Matt asked, “any thoughts?” The conspiracy theorist and I both shrugged. Matt’s flyer had advertised, “Do You Have an Opinion on the Iraq War? Voice it! Watch the screening . . . Discussions following.” I looked forward to voicing my opinion all weekend, but didn’t feel much like discussing Pentagon—al-Qaeda symbiosis with my new friend. Thankfully, the guy split as soon as he could. I helped Matt stack the chairs. “Whatja think?” he asked. “Well, it may as well have been a documentary about my unit,” I said, “we trained at Ft. Dix, we were there at exactly the same time, everything was the same.” I sort of hoped he’d ask me more about my tour. After all, I’d already listened to his story on Friday night. But he had no further questions for me. I plugged my documentary again and asked him if he knew anyone who might be interested in participating. “It’s mostly about homecoming,” I told him. But he was reserved. “I’m not interested in stuff like that,” he said, looking away from me, “you can do a lot of good doing stuff like that, but you can get people in a lot of trouble with UCMJ.” Matt and I separated without shaking hands. I got the feeling I was making him uncomfortable.

I noticed Matt’s desert combat boots as he walked away. Riding my bike home in the blustery cold, I thought about Sergeant Pink, a soldier from The War Tapes. His wife cannot understand why he continues to wear his dog tags in civilian life. I thought about how much Matt must love those old boots. I wore my Iraq boots at drill for two years after I returned, sentimentally passing up several new issues. But I couldn’t imagine myself wearing boots with blue jeans. Sometimes I sport my desert camo “boonie hat” –Woods scrawled across the back in English and Arabic – but most of the time I’m too embarrassed. Later, as my roommate and I chatted in our kitchen, he said, “I really like that belt.” I looked down, taking note of the faded green Army utility belt holding up my jeans. “Thanks,” I said. I like it too. A lot. And I guess I like the green Army socks I wear almost everyday too. A lot. I have my trinkets too, I realized. We all need some connection. Something that ties us to that place, something physical, something more than just memory and pain. Don’t ask me why.

Sergeant Pink doesn't like to be thanked either. He says the best thing someone can say is, "good to have you back." Specialist Moriarty - another soldier from The War Tapes - says of homecoming, "the biggest frustration . . . is that they don't care." The most patriotic of the three soldiers under the spotlight, Moriarty re-enlisted in the National Guard after a decade-long break in service with the express intent of going to Iraq. A self-proclaimed "deeply patriotic man" and unflinching Bush supporter prior to deployment, Moriarty returns deeply alienated by what he experienced as a war in which the "priority of KBR making money (Kellogg Brown & Root, primary Halliburton subcontractor) outweighs our safety." "They could offer me $500,000 and I wouldn't go back," Moriarty says, "I feel like it's someone else's turn." Back at work, where his boss had promised a year earlier "when you come back it'll be just like you never left," Moriarty finds his boss's promise a bit too true. Co-workers ask to hear war stories but don't listen. They ask to see his pictures but don't look. Moriarty's frustration comes across as the most tragic emotional moment in The War Tapes. "You will look at my goddamn pictures," Moriarity fumes, "you asked me to show them to you, I'm not flashing them around, and now you will do me the respect of looking at them."

Good to have you back, they say. Thank you. My heart goes out to you. Words cannot express my gratitude to you and your buddies for what you did over there. Now be quiet, please.