War In Iraq - Part Deux

Howzabout an update, spidergoat?

 

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Dude is fine, he's coming back to the states for the month of October. He has been taking correspondence courses on the internet in preparation for a degree in accounting. He said it will be strange driving here, because over there they drive on the left, and they often hop the curb and drive on the wrong side or where ever they wish. I'll have much more to tell after we are able to speak freely.

 

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Glad he's been keeping safe. We're going to need some very good accountants back home. I'm looking forward to your liberation of speech.

 

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They aren't attacked that much anymore. People do try, but with the new MRAPs and electronic countermeasures, they don't often succeed. Mostly the Iraqis fight each other, because they know if they fight US forces, they will lose. My friend feels Iraq is one of America's greatest failures, the country is a miserable place, trash everywhere, people living in squalor and abject poverty, children and adults begging in the streets. He has actually grown to dislike the Iraqi people, not Muslims or Arabs, just Iraqis. He's not typically one to be prejudiced, in fact he read the Quoran and made some effort in the beginning to speak arabic. Now they have translators. They are supposed to be respectful of the Iraqi military and police, to salute their officers, but no one does. So far, the worst thing about Iraq for him has been his own unit. He just has to deal with dumb people all the time and he can't talk back. We were in a supermarket here and he was wearing his uniform. People come up to him and say thanks, he thinks "for what?, all we do is drive around and give out candy.". Driving is the hard job, as opposed to manning the gun, because you can't sleep. Sometimes they guard where they give out propane and rationed food.

You should see how the fat middle aged women swoon over him in the store! He couldn't wait to change into civilian clothes. He had very good impressions of Germany. He does feel kind of tramautized, and not due to any violence, but rather the experience of his fellow soldiers and the Army culture. I asked him what will happen when the US leaves, he says the Iraqis will just fight each other.

 

The culture and conditioning of the soldiers can be hard to shake off.

 

why did your friend join the military anyway

 

See how long it takes him before he can drive past parked cars without bracing for shock.

 

Good question, he needed a job, a change.

He's never experienced an IED attack, so I doubt he expects that.

 

E3R: "...bracing for shock."

What good is "bracing", and why would you expect for exposure to urban war to consistently elicit that response?

The more I've been near things blowing up, the less I have been prone to flinch when that piercing fear returns. "Bracing" never comes to mind for me. That's not macho talk- just the realization that seemed to naturally follow, when I have known heartsinking moments of bomb-fear, and near escape, and later returned to the same scenes.

The strongest impression that I form from such experience? It gets you, or it doesn't. Regardless of posture.

Seeing it happen, you soon understand that there is no effective "brace" for being bombed without warning. And whatever the context, irrational fear of a ubiquitous context is soon tempered by the rational (although admittedly surreal) experience of a return to the ordinary. I find it very hard to believe that "brace for it" comes to mind for every parked car, broken pavement, or piece of road debris as the typical response, in a world replete with such things. I suspect a more rational (and more common, if less glorified emotional response) is a resentment for any arbitrary imperative to travel with any haste where the road ahead may be unsafe, with lethal dangers concealed.

"Parked Vehicle! Brace!"

That doesn't seem to me the typical response for every context (especially pacific ones) for those who have witnessed hell breaking loose. I'm not saying that nobody comes away with this kind of tortured reflex- It's just that the folks I've known who have experienced bombings never seemed to act that way afterward (bracing when approaching anything that might conceal a bomb). The parked-car cringe would surely tend to get tiresome for anyone coping sanely in a world chock-full of parked cars.

 

When you survive shit like this a few times, you start to give mysteriously parked or abandoned cars a hairy eyeball. Memory is an associative thing. It took me a few weeks of normal California driving to completely break set, but everyone is different.

Obviously bracing up isn't a trained response, and tensing your muscles harms more than it helps if you do get hit, but people still do it. Another thing I noticed myself doing was crossing completely over a double yellow line to maximize distance from cars parked by themselves, or checking to see if Warlock was up. (Warlock is an active jammer for radio command detonators like garage door openers and cell phones.)

 

Hype, people "tense up" (brace?) even when they approach the ghetto areas of major cities ...because of all the violence that has occured there in the past. It's a perfectly natural, human response.

Well, except for you, of course!

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Baron Max

 

Hypewader is Human?

 

No! He's a damned liberal.

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Baron Max

 

Nice to see you back.:thumbsup:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/w...1379736000&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

 

Mission Accomplished. Iraqis love what we've done with the place.

Time to go home now.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.main/index.html

 

Hurrah! Only 5 provinces to go, and we're outtathere!

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No, Hype, that's only if the Iraqis can show that they can take care of themselves without US help. Big difference, don't you see?

Baron Max

 

"No, Hype, that's only if the Iraqis can show that they can take care of themselves without US help."

They lived a lot better before we showed up with our "help", and had never threatened the USA.

Time to go home now.