Mistake?

The other day I was talking with a friend about the military sending more troops to Iraq. Now I'm not going to get political here, just giving the basics of the conversation. At the end of the conversation, my friend casually said, "The Iraqi war was just a useless waste." Now I know this person didn't mean this in a rude or demeaning way. They would never mean it to be hurtful, it was just a casual  comment that is becoming very common nowadays. But still, umm, ouch! It got me thinking though, about the ways that being there wasn't useless at all.


Right or not, we went there with good intentions. Again, I hate anything political and try to stay away from it because well, I think most of it and the people in it are bullshit. But in the end, we did free the Iraqi people from an evil dictator who suppressed his people. I don't care if you don't believe me, until you have been there and seen some of the opulent palaces mixed with dirt poverty. Better yet seen the torture chambers that were Saddam's sons playground don't act like you know anything about it. We gave the Iraqi people a chance to decide what government they want, now it's up to them to create a new future or fall back into the hands of another dictator. But at least for one moment they had a choice to make a new history.


I learned about myself. I found out that physically I could do a lot more than I thought. Not that I wanted to learn it but I did! Mentally, I found where my limits were; I also found that minds can break. Monsters live in everyone it's just how you decide to deal with them that decides whether you beat them or not. Trying to act like they don't exist will bottle you up until you explode. But letting it out to run rampant will ruin your life. It's a fine line of acknowledging it and yet not letting it run your life but also not hiding from it either.


It's truly the little things in life that matter. I grew up with seeing my parents and brothers every day, I figured once I joined the AF I would miss them but I had no idea how much  that it would really be. Just a simple phone call, hearing their voices reminded me that they were real, and there was life outside of this crazy one. I never really appreciated how much I love them until it was almost impossible to call them.


Probably the most important reason I will never call it a mistake; by saying the whole war was is a mistake, we say all the thousands of men and women who died there were for a mistake. For me, that's the most disgraceful thing we as a nation could ever say or imply. It's simply not an option to me. I won't over glamorize some political opinion about Iraq, but I will say that when their nation called, thousands of men and women gave up everything, including their lives to answer that call. Who would ever dare say that was a mistake? No rational thinking person would.