Welcome To His World
Acute Politics picks up where A Day in Iraq left off. The best American combat writer in Iraq:
The sun has set, and Venus shines low in the sky in poor reflection. The others are starting to straggle out to the vehicles. It’s time to prep for the mission. Tonight, we’re going back up into the general area where we lost three of ours so shortly ago- not the same road- and this is the first time we’ve been back that way. I look around at my friends and try to read their faces. They could be scared, and most of us are, a little. They could be numb- just doing their job. Again, most of us are, a little. However, I think that most of us are out for blood. It might sound horrible, inhuman, even medieval, but the fact of the matter is that someone out there killed friends of ours, and we’re going back into a place where we just might get the guy that did it. We’ll never know if it was him, of course, but there’s always the chance that we’ll even the scales unknowingly.
Killing is not natural to sane people, no matter how often it has happened over eons. There are many ways that you can reconcile yourself in some way to the idea of killing another human. You can think of it as duty- you have a job, and that job requires violence. You can hate- the easiest of all excuses, and the most exhausting. You can look at it as simple survival- if you don’t kill him, then he’ll kill you. However you justify it, you are still in a war, and people will still die. It wears on everyone- the American deaths, the “collateral damage” we inflict on people in the wrong place at the wrong time, the innocents killed when some faceless murderer blows himself up in a crowd. Yes, even the enemy dead take their toll.
Teflon Don knows about death. Read the whole thing. And take a stroll through his site while you’re there.
Earlier TD here, on the deaths of his friends. With links to Boston Herald columns on USMC Capt. Jennifer Harris, whose body they helped recover. She was buried today in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Then, go to A Day in Iraq, and click on “A Brief Uncertainty” in his archives. Not permalinking for some reason. But passages like this will permalink on your brain:
During bad or uncertain times, time itself doesn’t stand still or slow down, it’s more like it spreads out, like each minute has its own personality and some of those personalities really want you to get to know them. That happened with me today, probably with a few of us.
… The sound of the explosion doesn’t affect me so much as the thought of what produced it. It was another IED, and a cloud of smoke and dust began rising over some buildings around the corner.
I immediately realized that some of our humvees were around that corner, the same corner from which the smoke cloud now floated over like some evil spirit. That’s when time started spreading out, forcing me to come to know it intimately. I needed a ticket for the train that would take me to the next station, the next minute, to get back to the present that was leaving me behind. The radio became my ticket.
“Red 3, this is Red 4 over” “This is Red 3″ “Is everyone okay?” Short pause, “Roger, it was in front of us, over” I knew there was another humvee in front of Red 3. Our platoon sergeant called over the radio again, “Red 2, this is Red 4, is everyone okay?” Silence. I’ve now stopped chewing my gum. Silence. Silence. “Red 2, this is Red 4, is everyone okay?” Silence. I do a mental list of who all was in that humvee. Sgt. B, Ray, Farrell, Rob, and Hogan. Ray is going home on leave soon to see his wife. They’re going on a cruise somewhere in the Caribbean. Silence. Before we left, Rob and I were acting like we were getting pumped up by the loud music coming from someone’s computer. It was ACDC, and everyone in our room was mockingly throwing fists in the air like we were about to run out onto the field before the biggest game of our life. Someone joked that the terrorists were probably listening to some music as well, preparing themselves to meet us on the battlefield. Silence. This minute is spreading thin. I borrowed a movie from Hogan the other day and need to return it. Silence. Farrell couldn’t stop smiling the other day after getting a letter from a girl back home. Silence. Sgt. B has a son that looks just like him.
Bill Faith reminds us not to forget Danjel Bout at 365 and a Wake Up.
Dean Barnett adds Michael Yon. And let’s not forget Bills Roggio and Ardolino. Technically, the embedded bloggers are practicing reportage, sometimes literary and inspired. The literary grunts still need a category all their own.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:05 pm on Monday, February 19, 2007
7 Responses to “Welcome To His World”
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February 19th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Welcome To His World
Welcome To His World Jules Crittenden Acute Politics picks up where A Day in Iraq left off. The best American combat writer in Iraq: The sun has set, and Venus shines low in the sky in poor reflection. The others
February 19th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Bill’s Nibbles — 2007.02.19
Some Bill’s Bites posts, some things I excerpted and linked but I’m sending you to the original post. I may rearrange the order of the items within this post as I add new things that I think belong above the
February 19th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
These are the men who were too stupid to avoid being sent to Iraq. It breaks my heart, and makes my mind glow red with blind anger, to know that there are traitors to freedom within our government who spit on these men and what they are doing; traitors to freedom who talk about “slow-bleeds” and hope that no one notices that those doing the bleeding are these men; traitors to freedom who are so cynical and callous that these men are no more than political fodder for a traitor’s treasonous ends.
It is my most fervent wish to see these traitors meet a traitor’s end.
February 19th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
THIS LINK is the perma-link for A Brief Uncertainty Jules. Had to grovel down to the bottom of the post and it was there on the time stamp.
I’ve experienced that time effect he talks of.
February 19th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
THIS LINK is the perma-link for A Brief Uncertainty Jules. Grovel down to the bottom of the post and its there on the time stamp.
I’ve experienced the time effect he talks of.
February 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I don’t know how “Acutepolitics” managed to not be in my “daily read” list! While relieved to have him back I really missed going to “365 and a Wake-up” everyday hoping to find more well written commentary by someone I think I would have been friends with if we had met in “the world”. I think you have given me back that sense of immediacy by putting up this link!
February 20th, 2007 at 1:13 am
[...] Hat tip: Jules Crittenden [...]