In Case You've Forgotten

Sometimes it's easy to forget about things that for on for so long. It becomes mundane, second-nature, or a given - no more worthy of our attention than the tree outside your bedroom window. Somewhere along the line, I feel this happened with the Iraqi War. It may not be covered by the media as much, but it's still going on and it has no more purpose now than it was in 2003.

Please go to this website. If nothing else, skim through the recent statistics of the war.
http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm

“I’ll bet you one thousand dollars you wouldn’t wear that outfit for one whole day when you are twenty-one,” I remember my father wagering to my ten-year old sister many years ago.

She wore baggy jean shorts, an oversized T-shirt, and a backwards Superbowl cap, and identified herself as a “tomboy.” She quickly accepted the bet, stating that she would still think the clothes she wears when she is ten are cool when she is twenty-one.

I was not shocked, surprised, or even very interested to learn that my sister decided to join enlist in the U.S. Marines in 2003, right after high school graduation. She grew up to be the kind of girl who got her nails done, straightened her hair every morning before school, was deathly terrified of spiders (she would have me kill any she spotted in her room; once she even offered to switch bedrooms with me because she was convince the spider population in her room was higher than the rest of the house) and enjoyed partying.

But she also refused to drive a car that wasn’t a standard, out-argued anyone bold enough to raise their voices, whether it be our parents, boys, or me (I’m not saying she was always right, she just refused to give up), and had a borderline vulgar sense of humor (you should have heard her laugh after she ripped a huge fart).

“How do you feel about your sister’s decision?” My parents asked me more than once.

“I wouldn’t do it, but if it’s what she wants to do then I’m all for it.”

It’s not that I didn’t understand the significance and of my sister’s quick and unexpected decision to enlist. I guess at first I thought maybe she did it because she wasn’t so sure what else to do. She didn’t want to go to college, and she definitely didn’t want to settle for a job she wasn’t passionate about – I guess in that way we are kind of the same. But somewhere along the line, she began to prove to everyone that she is very good, and very dedicated to her job as a Marine.

When she went to Iraq during the height of the war, my mother reacted much like most mothers would in the same situation. She’d lie in bed awake at night or paced. She fixated on broadcast news reports. She saw every gruesome image, every interview with the parent’s of a fallen soldier, every attack on Bush.

Mom plastered her car with “Support the Troops” and “Marine Mom” bumper stickers. She tied massive yellow ribbons in the trees. It made me a little embarrassed that she became so gung-ho military. To me, it seemed like a show, a way to say “look at how I’m suffering, look at what my kin is doing.” But now I understand that a good way to overcome fear is to embrace it, to give strength to it. Even if it’s only in thought – it sort of negates those feelings of helplessness.

Some days in Iraq, Sometimes, my sister would volunteer to be a “guardian angel,” which is a soldier who stands watch for attacks on vehicles while militia and goods are transported from one site to another.

She would regularly hear bombs and mortars whistle through the sky – the sound of loud fireworks about to erupt into color. The sound would grow louder and louder until the hissing was brought to a silence by distant or not- so –distant impact. That’s when the adrenaline rush kicks in.

“Survived another one” the soldiers would think or say to one another almost excitedly before continuing with whatever work they had been assigned (for my sister it was filling out casualty reports). She never told me what side those missiles were launched from. I always assumed they were from the Iraqis, but more than likely, the U.S. set them off.

At the end of her stint in Iraq, she came back to sunny California, and back to her normal life on base. We were both busy with our own lives and didn’t have much chance to communicate. But I heard things from my parents. I heard she wanted to go back to Iraq because life here is just so boring compared to the middle East. I heard that sometimes my sister, my fake-nailed, boy magnet sister, is filled with the intense urge to put a bullet through somebody’s head.

While my sister doesn't wear a backwards cap or baggy clothes anymore, I think she won the bet against my dad. My sister. The bad ass, tomboy, killing machine in stilettos.

***

In the recent past, when applying to journalism scholarships and internships, I’d start off my admissions essay like this:

My favorite childhood game of make-believe was “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” When we were young, my sister and I would each play characters and create adventures. While my sister chose to be Donatello, the undisputed kung-fu leader of the group, I always took the role of April O’Neil, the ace reporter who never missed an opportunity to create ninja turtle lead. It is, I suppose, appropriate that my sister is now enlisted in the U.S. Marines while I am an aspiring newspaper journalist.

It was a cute little anecdote at the time. But the more I think about the war, the harder it is for me to see the humor, or make light of the situation.

I can’t express how mad it makes me that this pointless fight is still going on. The wasted money, the wasted human life, the fear, the misused technology, the fucking dirty politics. How did we let ourselves have absolutely no control over how our democratic government uses and abuses our resources? How did we become helpless?

She recently re-enlisted and trained for a new job in intelligence. She's going to Iraq again. I knew she would be, but I didn't start thinking about it until yesterday when she sent me an email - she has to miss my college graduation because she'll gone to the sandbox by then. I didn't worry about her the first time. This time I don't want her to go. Of course I support her, but that rock heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach probably won't go away.