Thank you for your service

It's that wonderful time of year in New Mexico, when we pack dried-out tents full of explosives, which are sold by sweating meth-heads smoking cigarettes.

Every year, this state loses thousands of acres of land to wildfires. And we celebrate independence by firing pyrotechnics into dried grass. Because that makes sense. But let's not worry about little, unimportant questions like "physics." Instead, let's consider the realities of living in the 21st Century.

For example, a few years ago, we had the C-Student President, whose advisers felt we needed a permanent base in the Middle East. So he took us to war. Around 68 hundred American soldiers died for this idiotic attempt to flex our military muscle. But, more importantly for (but oddly related to) the following issue, 970,000 soldiers were damaged (mentally or physically) in the course of fighting in those two related wars.

I figured out, some years back, my own minor insanity. I have the mildest case of PTSD ever reported - I just get cranky and irritable when shit starts blowing up. Which, if you think about it, just qualifies more as "survival instincts" than truly being PTSD.

But here's the problem: explosions have somewhat lost their thrill for a certain percentage of the American populace.

Remember, more now than for any generation of American people in decades, when shit blows up, it doesn't make you want to stand proud. It reminds you of a time when you didn't have control. When your friends and comrades were getting killed around you, and there was nothing you could do.

There was a time when the Republican party celebrated the sacrifices of the American fighting forces. Now, they'd like to forget they exist.

But maybe, just maybe, you can remember them, just for this year. Every time you blow something up, you're reminding them of a time that they'd rather forget. Every firework you set off hurts someone in ways you can't begin to imagine. Be respectful of our troops.

Some of them sacrificed more than you think.

WITH A WHIMPER NOT A BANG

Last night, the Iraq War ended with nothing to celebrate. Seven years and five months later, as the last combat brigade crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait, the war ended with a whimper although 50,000 advisory personnel will remain behind for another year. After 4,415 American fatalities, 32,000 American wounded, millions of Iraqi casualties, the countless broken lives and wasted treasure … Mission Unaccomplished has been one long, tortuous saga of arrogance, incompetence, and stupidity bordering on criminal.

When our Vietnam veterans returned from war, they were vilified as proxies for the villains who sent them there. This time, we avoided the injustice. This time, we hurled our contempt at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bremer but honored our troops.

Awarded a second Bronze Star

I have good reason to honor our troops. My oldest daughter is an Iraq War veteran. She served in 3 deployments, each ranging from 15 to 22 months. War is a daily hell for the folks back home, a palpable anxiety that never goes away, dreading every knock at the door or telephone call in the middle of the night, the empty place at the holiday table, the person missing from every birth and funeral - seven years and five months of Family Life Interrupted.

Christmas 2006

I consider myself lucky. My daughter came home alive and intact. Tens of thousands of families were unlucky. Later I learned of the near misses - her barracks destroyed by a rocket while working overtime, nightly mortar fire, the roadside bomb that blew apart her colleagues and almost claimed my daughter, who scarcely recovered from flashbacks and nightmares before she was deployed yet again.

Christmas 2007

What has this mission accomplished? Iraq is a nation in ruins. The criminals who prosecuted this war will never be held accountable.  Ashes mingle with pollen. A police state has risen in the east. Again, our public square fills with indignant desert birds clamoring for new blood. There is nothing to rejoice, and the wine is too bitter.

Dawn over Baghdad