Country Feedback

What spurred this blog entry.

I've been seeing on NPR the updates of the US leaving Iraq. Today I saw an article on the last troops leaving through the Kuwait border. I teared up. I didn't realize the full extent of how much my four months in Iraq affected me. I was only there four months because the AF had not entered the four-six month rotations. I stayed a few extra weeks to make it four months even. I was on one of the last three-month rotations actually. Not really essential to the story...

While I was deployed I had the "glamorous" job of watching TCNs (third country nationals) work. I was there to ensure no international security incidents happened. It was boring. It was unimaginably boring. You know the phrase "watching paint dry." No, I really did. I watched roads being repaved, port-a-potties cleaned (and later emptied. That still makes my stomach turn), flight line cracks being filled in, and scrap metal moved from one spot to another. While this doesn't seem as high  profile or important as the fighter pilots who make kills or the security forces personnel on the front line in my eyes it was every bit as important. We were the ones making personal contact with the locals EVERY DAY for hours at a time. They were not all Iraqi. They also were not all blue collar, uneducated people. A once high-profile chemist was mixing cement at one site. Several scientist and college professors were fixing the flight line. As a ignorant barely twenty something I didn't think much about it. "Yeah," I thought, "Sucks for them, but life isn't fair." That's a idiom from Mom. :) The older I'm getting and the more I'm reflecting (in hind-sight glasses) the more I'm realizing what kind of impact we truly had. 

For a few weeks during my Iraq TCN stint I was the personal escort for the head contractor for all the reconstruction happening on base. His English was great, he was Iraqi, he was polite, and a gentleman. He only had one American album because he knew the one Iraqi station was a little much for our unaccustomed ears. Every time I hear a song from Shakira's first album I think of this guy. He would request me personally to be his escort. One day he didn't show up. One day turned into a couple of weeks and he came back finally without an ear. I'll skip the details but it involved loyalty to a friend. He was essentially the same man when he came back but I think the war maybe hit right at home to him. He was disgusted with how his fellow nationals were treating each other. I caught him burning Saddam's face off a monetary unit one day while he was daydreaming about something. Several TCNs did that actually, in isolated incidents. Burn Saddam's face off, crumple the bill, and throw it to the wind with a disgusted snort.

Do I have some moral to wrap this up with? No. My writing isn't going to change the general public's view of the war in Iraq but I truly think we were there doing good. All of the horror stories that you saw in the news were infrequent. The good works that Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen were doing everyday weren't newsworthy I suppose. 

Violence and co-countryman killings happen all over the world. People do crazy thinks in the name of religion every day. STILL, I think us pulling out might be premature. One of my flaws is my inherent trust in those put into power above me. From my job at the Exchange to the Commander In Chief I trust that they know what they are doing and are doing the best they can with the information/skills they have. So I continue to trust.