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Thoughts on the Forever Wars
It’s evening in the desert
I’m tired and I’m cold
But I am just a solider
I do what I am told
Billy Joel, Christmas in Fallujah
I was an enlisted man, and when you are an enlisted man all meaningful decisions are “above your pay grade.”
My son was an enlisted man, a Marine who made the Army a career. But as he reminds me, “Once a Marine; always a Marine.” On my son’s second deployment to Iraq, I was so damn mad that I voted a straight ticket for the only time in my life. I was no longer in the military, but it felt like all meaningful decisions were still above my pay grade.
The two of us both enjoy all the privileges of disabled veteran license plates. I’m rated 60 percent; he is 100 percent and that got him an involuntary medical retirement.
The current POTUS is called by Trump-skeptics “Cadet Bone Spurs.” As best I can tell, the moniker was bestowed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) by stringing together Trump’s remark that his military themed prep school gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military” and his avoidance of the Vietnam War with a bogus “bone spur.” Duckworth, who left both her legs in Iraq when her chopper was shot down, was angry about Trump calling the…
