The “end” of the Iraq War kind of rolled right past me. Odd, I know, since my adult life thus far has been shaped, in large part, by my participation in that war. It affected how I view the Middle East, how I view my profession, how Michele and I have grown our marriage and raised our children. Most dramatically, from a philosophical perspective, it changed how I view my own country and my duty.

I deployed to Kuwait in late February of 2006. Shortly thereafter my unit was moved from “strategic reserve” at Camp Buehring to Southern Baghdad. For the first three months it was, to tell the truth, kind of fun. It was just dangerous enough to feel like we were doing something real, but our company wasn’t taking any casualties. I’d lived in Germany and Korea, but Iraq was something new to me, dirty and dangerous as it was. Finally I wasn’t in a classroom or going through a BS FTX run by half-baked observer-controllers, many of whom hadn’t even deployed before. I was in the shit. I was going to be a genuine veteran. When my kids asked me what I did in the Army, I wasn’t going to have to say, “well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

I was an odd duck in the company. I was a brand new lieutenant of Field Artillery in an Infantry company where all the other lieutenants had been working together for well over a year. They were all pretty cool about it, I wasn’t ostracized or hazed or anything. I was just new and, being a 13A with no Ranger Tab, necessarily a different breed. All the platoon leaders and the XO were good guys, but the company commander was an outstanding officer. He was an incredibly hard worker, which in and of itself isn’t that remarkable- many career officers are super-A personalities. No, what was remarkable about him was that he pushed himself and his subordinates that hard without being a douche about it. At the time it impressed me, after experience with God-only-knows-how-many superiors in the intervening years, it now astounds me. In the short months I served under the man, I received just one ass-chewing. The Commander explained my shortcomings in performance in such a calm, professional and meticulous manner that when he was done I knew damn well that I had thoroughly deserved it.

Sadly, I never really got the chance to act on his corrections. A few days after that uncomfortable conversation we were riding back to the FOB from a council meeting when an EFP ripped our M1114 Humvee apart like a beer can. The driver and I were blown clear and wounded, me badly but not catastrophically, the driver was in much worse shape but he lived and recovered. The Commander and his gunner were killed instantly. The medics, with help from the infantrymen and God, stabilized both of us, got us on a MEDEVAC bird and my war was over. I was to go back to Iraq for another fifteen months in 2008-2009, but it was that moment in Southern Baghdad and the weeks in the hospital that followed that changed something in me.

While I was in Iraq I hadn’t worried about public opinion regarding the war. I was too preoccupied with the excitement and trepidation of finally being “at war,” and with the challenge of learning a job for which I had received almost no training. Oh, the Army trained me to be a Fire Support Officer, I could’ve integrated howitzers, mortars, attack helicopters and fixed wing close air support into the Commander’s scheme of maneuver all day long, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea then what Information Operations, PSYOP, Civil Affairs and the like were supposed to accomplish. So the protests, the recriminations, the divisions that we’re occurring back home meant little to me while I had a job to do in Baghdad.

They meant nothing to me, actually, until I found myself flat on my back in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center watching the news. Watching the protests, hearing that treasonous sack of shit Michael Moore call Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh Al Mahdi, “the minutemen,” filled me with rage. Seething, poisonous rage. The 76% had sent us to war in 2003, and when things got complex, got bloody, got ambiguous, suddenly they showed up in droves to protest, comparing President Bush to Hitler, droning on about US war crimes etc, etc. I saw idiot college kids re-hash all the crap their draft dodging cowardly excuses for progenitors had taught them. All that was bad enough, but I actually found something that started pissing me off even more. It was just one phrase, bandied about by, I believe, the majority of the protest movement:

“I support the troops but not the war.”

I understand the good intention behind this statement, and five years hence, I’m a bit more rational about the whole matter. But that sentence, intended to allow civilians to advocate America’s surrender in Iraq while simultaneously assuaging their consciences that they weren’t stabbing the military in the back the way their worthless forefathers did during the Vietnam War, still gives me heartburn. My not so humble opinion is that once you’ve paid in blood, there are no refunds. I can’t make Specialist Blair or Captain Dicenzo or any of the other thousands of Americans killed un-die. I can’t re-grow the limbs or even stop the nightmares of those who’ve survived catastrophes far worse than what I’ve been through. So what’s the only thing to do with so much death and suffering? For FUCK’S SAKE YOU MAKE IT MEAN SOMETHING.

Protesters, pretending to be “supportive” of me, were trying to render my comrades’ deaths meaningless by conceding victory to a bunch of raggedy ass insurgents. It doesn’t matter that there were or weren’t nukes at that point. It doesn’t matter that the whole venture was a genuinely stupid idea. Once you’ve paid in American lives, you HAVE to secure a victory, otherwise you piss on the graves of those who laid down their lives in the defense of the Republic. The time to protest the war is before the first shot is fired, not while your own men and women are struggling to win it.

With the full benefit of hindsight, I freely admit that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq when we did. We were already committed in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea were clearly bigger threats, and our Army was NOT in proper shape to occupy (yes, occupy, let’s not mince words) a country of 30 million people. We did it anyway, but it was an unreasonable mission, and the Sec Def and Commander in Chief were irresponsible to commit us to that mission without first building our ground forces to a size commensurate with the mission. I wish it hadn’t happened but it did, and now, for the moment, it appears to be over.

So how do I feel about it?

To quote one of my favorite fictional Jews; “I’ll tell you- I don’t know.”

Despite all the divisions and recriminations surrounding the war, all the fumbles by leaders at all ranks both civilian and military, we did one hell of a job in Iraq. We stomped a multi-headed insurgency into the ground. We established, however briefly, a modicum of peace after seven years of war. And we did eliminate a family of murderous rapine lunatics that ruled absolutely over 30 million people.

On the other hand, Iraq looks about as stable as a house of cards constructed by an alcoholic with palsy once we leave. Sectarian violence simmers under the surface. There doesn’t seem to be a leader who can breach the gap between the various factions. Perhaps the last ten years have made me a pessimist, but it’s hard to believe that the current Iraqi regime will long survive without direct US military support.

I don’t know which idea depresses me more, the idea that the current Iraqi government will collapse and those who put their money on us pay a horrifying price in lives due to their “collaboration” with us, or the idea that we’re heralding the withdrawal of combat forces only to have to re invade the country two, or five, or ten years down the road. I’m not ashamed to admit that I hope it’s over. I’ve had enough of Iraq. After one very short and one very long tour I’ve no desire to ever lay eyes on that place again.

But I’ve watched the footage of Vietnamese in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) clinging to the skids of our UH-1s in 1975, and even though that war was over before I was even born, I burn with the shame of it. Will we do the same thing in Iraq? Abandon those who believed in us because it’s the easiest option? You know that’s part of the reason we’re fighting in Afghanistan still- we abandoned those we had supported during the Soviet War and, surprise, they were overpowered by those more ruthless and even less interested in anything we would recognize as civilized behavior. It’s not all pie-in-the-sky idealism when I talk about living up to our moral commitments as a nation. Inevitably you do reap what you sow.

So I can’t really celebrate. I want the war over more than any Berkley educated surrender monkey could ever dream, but I can’t escape the conclusion that either it isn’t really over, or we’re about to suffer yet another blot on our national honor which will take years to fade. God, I hope I’m wrong.