Twenty years ago I stood hungover in a blistering bright but cold November day in North Carolina listening to some Marine Lieutenant fresh off the bus from Annapolis give a class on the new threat to world peace - the urban fanatical terrorist - growing out of Southwest Asia and I thought to myself: First - damn, the Berlin Wall is still falling and these brass-asses already moved on to a new game...next thing I know we'll be drinking Pertsovka with the Russkies. Second - South West Asia? Where's that? The west side of Laos? Mekong? Chosin? Urban? I thought they all lived in rice-huts in the middle of mud paddies.
The Veteran in the picture was a WWI Vet holding the flag that draped the casket of his son killed in the Korean War.
I soon realized that Southwest Asia was the new moniker for "urban fanatical terrorist" land. How new was it? When did we begin using the term South West Asia? I honestly could not find any direct reference to it's inception so I assume it was the manifestation from some smokey Pentagon room as an attempt to "make things right" with the Vietnam/South East Asia Veterans which really didn't make much sense.
Little did I know that less than a year after listening to that cute Lieutenant explain the new threat to world peace coming from the "middle east" I would be eating camel in the middle of the Arabian Desert marching north toward Kuwait City and Basra like some modern day Lawrence of Arabia on his way to Damascus! Just what went on in those dark smoke filled Pentagon backrooms? They knew.
Over the years I formed this growing disdain for military action abroad and I must admit that much of it was fueled by my dislike for the neo-con's but the thing I never could really reconcile was that I was a complete Israeli Hawk; which should find me on the same side as the Amerikan evangelicals and war-mongers following Pat Robertson and getting google-eyed over Ron Paul. Ron Paul? Huh? I'll take the Republican Whip Eric Cantor...I must say he is really pretty but he is the perfect embodiment of one of USMC - uncle shadai's misguided children. Just a joke, Marine's sometimes refer to themselves as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.
As I was writing this my phone rang, call from my dad. A little over a month ago I decidied I was "done with him" as I said in my un-neutered male-hair-standing-up machismo-adrenaline-driven stupidity. As the phone rang I could feel beads of sweat building up on the head of my dick as I rapped my fingers on the table in some weird Chopin piano riff style and could hear Jerry Garcia whispering in my ear "take up your china doll, it's only fractured and just a little nervous from the fall...all I leave behind me is what I found...stranger ones have come by here..." I figured if Chopin and Garcia were sending me a message at this point the only rightful thing for me to do was to...................hit END CALL! Please, I am a Leo, a purring little cat so I answered the phone and my father and I spoke about Theodore Roosevelts setting the stage for our National Forest system (something we both enjoy), Franklin Roosevelts wonderful programs before, during, and after the depression and his own indellible marks left on the preservation of some of our nations wilderness through the CCC, our uncommon bond of both being die-hard Democrats no matter what!, my Uncle Joe's military service in WWII, the people who were able to continue their lives beyond a very bleak and tortured eastern Europe because cynicism did not determine what was right or wrong, the soul did.
Yesterday I had stepped out of my office into the showroom we have at work - my office has two doors, one into the showroom and one into the warehouse - and a few feet away I heard a really loud and hard knock on the door, more like a banging, and as I turned to go back I was met face to face by this mid-fifties stragly haired guy who grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest and said "Happy Birthday Marine! Semper Fi! names Terry Downs, they call me Tango and wanted to tell a fellow Marine Happy Birthday". November 10th is the Marine Corps birthday and it had not even crossed my mind. Terry was a medium sized guy with fairly stocky arms, bushy mustache, Marine Corps hat on, hair flinging out the sides...as he pulled my forearm to his chest in a hand shake gesture it all dawned on me: the Marine Corps was formed Nov 10, 1775 - one year before this country pissed it's colors, the president's own protect his quarters today just as those early blue coats did General Washington, they even guide his horse in the sky like they did his canoe... OK enough.
It dawned on me that my disdain for not removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq was due to my own dark crevices selfishly absorbing the light from others. When I came in from work Wednesday, Veterans Day, I sat down and watched one of the evening news programs segment on a young veteran in his late twenties enduring the tumultuous recovery from injuries suffered by an IED in Afghanistan. He was on a morning run outside of DC hoping to become a drill Sargeant to train young recruits...he was running on two prosthetics, lost both legs but still saw the light!
I thought about my dear friend Karen's father who was an Air Force pilot in WWII who flew numerous missions over Germany - the compass, glasses, and miscellaneous military items issued to him that Karen gave to me. I thought about the berets, scarves, ribbons, and miscellaneous items I brought home from Iraqi soldiers.
So, Veterans Day. I thought about the nightmares and dreams we all brought home and realized that it's my fucking Marine Corps and the boys over there are my brothers and the ones that went before us are all our fathers.
No matter what the President decides I will support. Not for some nation building geostratifying nation building fantasy but for the hearts that march on led by the ones that went before.
To ALL Veterans...thanks and Semper Fidelis!
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