February 25, 2003~~2:32 p.m.
What Part of War Don't You Understand?
So Omar left for war last Friday morning. I assume, that since I have not received any bad news, he made it safely to Camp Coyote, Kuwait. In discussing Camp Coyote with Bevin, I have determined that it sounds more like a summer camp than a pre-war post. �Hello kids! Welcome to CAAAAMP COYOOOOTEEE!! AAAAWOOOOOO!� (Perhaps a rallying cry in the likeness of a coyote?) Promptly, I can imagine, Omar and his Marine cronies would be assigned a lovely tent, or maybe just a plot of sand, and perhaps they would be shown where the bottles of water are that they get to use once a week to �shower.� And I bet that instead of the old saying, �leaves of three, let it be!� in regard to poison oak, there might be posters about land mines and grenades and such. Maybe there would be a little scuffle when one Corporal tried to steal the teddy bear of another, but hopefully, a Sergeant would intervene and solve that problem immediately. �This is war, boys!� He might say gruffly. �Now, act like the campers I know you can be!� It is important to establish the rules at Camp Coyote immediately, I can imagine. Otherwise, chaos. So really, can I just say that the most ridiculous statements continue to be made to me by well-meaning people who, in reality, only serve to make me slightly more annoyed with this whole situation than I already am. I mean, here I am, four months pregnant, alone, checking news websites constantly, waiting for Shrub to give the �go ahead� to rearrange Saddam�s face but only seeing a constant stream of headlines that read things like, �Bush Requests Full Disarmament!� (well, no shit) and �Powell Visits UN for the Nth Time!� (uh huh) and �Cheney Picks His Nose Amid Giggles from Bush� and all I want is this whole thing to be over and done so Omar can come home and see our child be born. However, during my daily routine, I am faced with people making stupid comments and suggestions and �hoping� for things that aren�t to be, and which I have reconciled aren�t to be, in my own head. I am always nice to these people, but judging from the frequency with which I am faced with their stupidity, it occurs to me that there are several myths that should be dispelled just to clear things up. First of all, what we are preparing for and facing is not just some military exercise and it�s not a farce. This is a WAR. On top of that, we are dealing with the MILITARY. The military does not care that I am pregnant. The military would not care that I was pregnant in peacetime. Omar has a duty to go where they tell him to go and when they tell him to go. The fact that he has a personal life has not entered into the minds of the people making the decisions for him. It hasn�t made a difference for the past year, when plans for time off would change at the last possible second and we would be canceling flight reservations right and left. Thus, when I have this baby, assuming that Omar is still making sandcastles in Kuwait in August, the military will obligingly pay us about $200 more a month for our new family member, but, no, he will not be given a ticket home to be a daddy in the midst of a battle. For some reason, people seem to forget all the World War II babies that never met their fathers or who were two years old when their fathers came home from the war. This is no different except we hope the war will be quick and easy. The military is not a business that has conceded to giving new daddies paternity leave. Please. I realize the fact that in the year 2003 it is hard to imagine a woman having a baby all alone while her husband fights a war, but the sooner you recognize, the better off the country will be. You will become an educated voter! The anti-war protests will mean something to you! Just like that. Next, I would like to address the issue of people saying things to my mother like, �Can�t Mark (my dad, who is an attorney with a few connections) call someone up and get Omar out of this?!� Um, hello? Let me backtrack. Before I knew I was pregnant, we knew that our country was going to go to Iraq and start shit. We knew there was a slim chance that Omar would be released from his activation before the war would start. In this event, he had pretty much decided that he would volunteer to go with his unit to the Middle East. He could not see letting those men go alone, without him. They are his friends, his brothers, his responsibility and people who need the knowledge he possesses to stay alive. Even when I found out I was pregnant, he still mulled over the thought that he would volunteer to go with them. The decision was made for us, obviously, when he was re-activated and ordered to go. Omar has been training for a year for the things they are about to do in Iraq. He is well-respected within his unit and although I don�t know much about the details of his urban warfare training, I know that he is one of the smartest and most level-headed people I know, which leads me to believe that he knows a shitload about the best way to go about breaking down a door in Baghdad under fire. The Marines NEED him there to do this and he WANTS to be there because this is what he signed up for. And he knows his guys need him, too. So, to the people who make comments like �can�t he get out of it?� please do not force your own mentality on this situation by assuming that he thinks like you do. This is a person who, 7 years ago, chose to sign that dotted line and volunteered to put his entire life and career on hold to go and fight a war just like this one, if the need arose. He believes SO strongly in what this country stands for that he would die for it. This is made all the more honorable considering the fact that neither of us supports this particular war. We are not convinced that this is not about oil and finishing what Bush Sr. started. That said, there is still no way, that, given the option to �get out of it� Omar would ever take the offer. Just because YOU could not die for a cause you might not believe in, does not, by any means, mean that HE could not, or would not. This brings me to a comment I have not been privy to, but the mother of one of the guys in Omar�s unit has been. Apparently, when she discusses the fact that her 24-year-old son is now in Kuwait after being activated a year ago and spending the last year in San Diego, people say to her, �Well, HE signed up!� Can you think of a more insensitive comment to make to someone? Especially when the comment is made with a hint of disdain for the decision that this young man made. As if he is �getting what he deserves� for making such a �stupid choice.� To those people I say, these Marine reservists who, under normal circumstances, do not normally train day in and day out for a living, have more honor in their trigger fingers than you could ever hope to have in all of your insensitive and selfish days. A person who would make a comment such as this deserves to be considered on the same moral level as the very person this war is about to annihilate. The last issue I would like to address at this time is that of the comments regarding what type of communication Omar and I will have while he is away. The fact is, that the Marines are toughing it out in the sand somewhere, likely sleeping on the hard ground. Eventually, they will be traveling by foot to wherever they might need to go to be in position to fight. For now, the families have been provided an address to which we can send mail to our guys. Eventually, I expect even the mail service to be cut off once Omar and his unit are in the thick of things. Let�s face it: rain sleet and snow is one thing�a battle in downtown Baghdad is another. So, expectedly, people ask me if Omar and I will be able to talk via phone or email. I am not sure. I doubt it. In my experience, it is best to assume the worst conditions with the military and when you are wrong, it is a big, happy surprise. So the other day, I was at work and this girl (we�ll call her Alice) asked me about how things would be in this regard. When I said we likely would have little communication, she said the following: �Well, he should take one of those Motorola pagers or something!� I was fighting the urge to not say something really mean, and instead suggested that we probably wouldn�t be allowed to use those because they are unsecured communication devices. I�m not sure the Marine Corps would appreciate me paging Omar so as to provide a direct satellite signal to the Iraqis of his whereabouts. But, let�s also review the OTHER problems inherent in Alice�s statement, just because, well, it�s my diary and I can. Aside from the fact that we now recognize that Alice has about 2 functioning brain cells, I really wonder what the hell kind of inspiration she thought she had that WE didn�t because, lo, we hadn�t thought of the PAGER IDEA!!!! (Insert sarcasm here) And also, there was the time issue. I mean, not that she was supposed to know Omar�s schedule or anything, but come on. The guy is preparing to leave for WAR in 2 DAYS. I�m pretty sure there are other priorities before heading off to the mall to haggle with pager companies 48 hours before your flight leaves from the Air Force base. In addition, there is a sand issue in Kuwait. Once, I got sand in my portable cd player and that was IT for the thing. Electronics and sand don�t mix well. And let�s just assume that sand is not an issue for a moment but, um, when you�re out camping in the dunes just outside of the Iraq border and your unit doesn�t even have mail service, let alone email technology, where o where would one plug in the charger for one�s FUCKING PAGER??!! I mean, I was dumbfounded. I couldn�t believe my ears. Does Alice think that, after a long day busting down doors in Baghdad and dodging bullets, Omar is going to go home to his pallet and check his pages? Return phone calls? Pay his bills?! It is ludicrous. Or, in another scenario, am I supposed to page him little �love messages� that say �call me! 911!� during the day so that, when he is trying to stealthily creep toward an occupied building somewhere, in his digital desert camis, complete with an incognito helmet, his pager is going to go off and blow his cover?! And then, is he supposed to say, �Oh hang on a minute guys. My wife just paged me. Anyone got an Iraqi dinar I can use in the pay phone?� In conclusion, I would like to recognize that sometimes people genuinely believe themselves to be helping me. And for their concern, I am appreciative. But honestly, I am fine and I will be fine. In fact, I have come to decide that other people are more worried about me being alone than I am. I am not worried at all. Of course, I would rather have Omar here, experiencing this pregnancy with me and sharing our lives, but at the moment, that is not possible. What IS possible, however, is for people to look beyond their realities and to consider for one moment, that every time George Bush says �We will not back down until Saddam disarms� there are a thousand Marines sitting in Kuwait or on their way there ready to back him up, as ludicrous as he may sound when trying to pronounce big words. And for every Marine over there eating dehydrated food in the desert (does this make sense to anyone else?), there are a hundred of us back home who couldn�t be prouder of the choices they have made and the honor with which their characters are comprised. And they are all in it together. So I guess what I�m asking is, that instead of thinking of silly ways to make this easier on me and Omar, or reasons why Omar alone should get to come home, spend your time praying that he and the guys in the Echo Company, 2nd Marines, 23rd Battalion, 3rd Platoon make it home quickly and safely. And do not, for even one day, go without recognizing their sacrifices and the fact that they deserve so much more respect from us than we could ever give. And long live Camp Coyote! AAAAWWWOOOOOOOOOOOO!
|
