Out of Iraq

Out of Iraq by the New Year. The sand will blow over the carcasses of our blown out vehicles like it does for the old Russian tanks in Afghanistan. I will live a life and so will all who survived the country and somewhere out there will be the metal and fabric skeletons that we used for our war. For the Veterans of this war, we will have to begin to make a shift in care as these wars come to an end. We will journey the transition from current news to a distant memory most likely similar to that of our Korean War. There was a war in Korea…I know! It ran from 1950 to 1953 and blew US Vietnam killed in action statistics out of the water in comparing these two wars for loss of life per day. The statistics of loss of life for the war on terror is infinitesimal compared to other American wars. The Korean War had been overshadowed by the hype of the end of the Second World War and minimized after no clear victory in that war had been achieved.

My hypothesis is that our connection to society as Veterans will be disconnected as soon as the war plug is pulled. Average Americans were not concerned about this war because it did not affect them, with no draft and no personal obligation to service for most Americans these wars were a television show that ran long in seasons and had been the same story since season four. This of course has happened before and to our brother and sister Veterans from Vietnam. Our problem is going to be in representation because it takes so few troops to conduct a war we are a true minority and will always have few numbers to voice our needs and concerns. A society will not suddenly care for a cause it had no previous interest in.

I hope that all of the Veterans of this war come together and organize to make sure that we continue to advance the level of care that we received because we earned it.
I hope our Vietnam Veterans who have been through this before guide us, and that America suddenly sees for the first time since WWII that Veterans are their friends and should be respected for risking their lives bravely for policies that they had no control over. I hope that when I fart it smells like fresh cut flowers. If we took one month out of what we had spent for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we could provide ample Veteran assistance for years to come, imagine if we took one year of that budget as a debt of gratitude from a nation to its Veterans as payment for a decade of service? Like we just pretended that the war was still going on for one more year, like the war Veterans who come home are faced to fight is really a war. I call this the one for ten for service plan.