What wounded veteran’s don’t need is sympathy. They need to be treated like the men they are: equals, heroes, and people who still have tremendous value for society.
The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.
The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they’re not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.
Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’ There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there.
In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It’s about being a man. And it’s about love as well as hate.
In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Everyone of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.
But real life doesn’t travel in a perfect straight line; it doesn’t necessarily have that ‘all lived happily ever after’ bit. You have to work on where you’re going.
