This War is Not Just

I do believe that a young man I met while working has just gone back to Iraq this week. I recall that it would be his second tour. But that alone is not what makes my heart bleed. What makes my heart bleed is that he will probably not make it home again.

You see, this young man, who is younger then I am, had already been hit with an IED once. He walked with a limp because the muscles had been shredded with scrap. His breathing was compromised because he had shrapnel in his chest. But this is not really the worst of it you see, oh no.

Add also the PTSD from the war. You could see it in his eyes, as he looked around at the restaurant with its obscuring booths and dim lighting. The flicker of paranoia in his gray eyes, as any gathering place could be a place where an enemy would strike. He was messed up enough in the head, to describe to me in detail how he had stabbed a man whom he had never met with the knife that he had wrestled away from him. Not with manic glee mind you but with the sad anger of someone who has been forced to do something awful by someone they despised. He did not try to justify his actions but stated that yes, it was murder.

Add also, his wife and daughter who was two had been killed by a drunk driver while he was on his last tour. Imagine being over there, in a dry sandy country, wondering why your wife has not called you in two weeks? He had finally made peace with his Polish (I believe it was polish) Step Grandfather at her funeral. The old man had said that his daughter had been happy with him and that was enough. But does that matter now?

So even if, this young man who is younger than me, doesn't die because his body is too battered to help him dodge the next bomb, and even if this young man who is younger than me, doesn't commit suicide once he is there, what will he have to come back to and live for?
He died in those sandy wastes and the man who sent him doesn't care. And I wonder if I'm the only one who really knows. A waitress, a complete stranger who brought him his first steak since he came back from a shattered country.

This war is not just.

Adios,
Jamie