This is the Iraq poem I mentioned several months ago, titled “I Run Away Quickly”, I.R.A.Q., which was some anonymous soldier’s clever acronym. I think it applies perfectly to the convoy escort mission my unit had. It felt like running away was all we did over there. As convoy escorts, we weren’t there to look for enemy, or to sustain engagements. We were there to get our supply convoys to their destination.

The halfhearted, bitter joke was that if we were ambushed, we’d “spray, pray and run away.” Our teams were made of three humvees with nine soldiers, dragging a mile-long convoy of twenty to thirty unarmored eighteen-wheel trucks driven by unarmed, untrained men from all over the third world who could rarely even speak to each other. If ambushed, we simply couldn’t put up a good fight. We were cat herders, just trying to get the mob on wheels to the next FOB.

Me and one of my teammates after our final convoy in Iraq.

And even worse, we were more likely to get hit by an IED than an ambush. My team took a couple of close IED calls, and was never in a real ambush. This wasn’t good. At least in an ambush you can shoot back. When your only threat is a roadside bomb, you sit in your humvee for hours tensed and expectant, waiting for a hit that might kill your entire crew. Those missions were no fun.

We never had a chance to spray, and I never prayed. But we ran away a lot.

I used to semi-seriously tell my friends about my biggest fear. An IED would hit one of our supply trucks and scatter its contents. I’d run from my humvee to check on the driver and a secondary would detonate close enough to mortally wound me. Then, as I was laying there dying, I’d look around and see what I had given my life to protect: Xbox games and gangsta rap CDs being delivered to a PX.

A 101st humvee after an IED strike, fall 2005.

This poem was about those missions. Let me know what you think. Thanks guys.

EDITED TO ADD: I just talked to my dad and found out he and my mom had an argument about this poem earlier. My mother got the idea that this was written by an anonymous soldier and I’m just reposting it, while my dad insisted I wrote it. My dad was right, I wrote it. The anonymous soldier I referred to only wrote

I
R un
A way
Q uickly

on a bathroom wall. I wrote the poem in 2006, about a year after I came home from Iraq.

—————————————————-

I Run Away Quickly

I can stand on this safe spot
In the embrace of my wife
Listening to my children’s laughter
Laying on a soft bed
In a comfortable home

Then turn and face my yesterday
And remember the world where I once lived
A place where talismans, mumbled prayers
And sacred pictures
Never really kept anyone alive

A world of monotonous, silent blackness
Broken by lethal red streaks and sudden flashes
Racing engines and racing pulses
Subdued lights and night vision
Static-blurred screams through electronic filters
Gaping craters the only memorial
To men who disappeared in flames and smoke

I remember the weight on my shoulders
And the weight on my mind
Of armor and weapons
Ammunition belts, frags and star clusters
Lives in my hands
Taking cover behind shredded steel
While a million eyes targeted me
From empty windows and looming rooftops

I still see what was left
In flames and in pieces
What had not long before been whole
What we thought powerful and solid
Scattered to shreds across the concrete
A glowing hulk surrounded on all sides
By random parts of a True Believer
A blank spot on a highway, an anonymous checkpoint
Where a brave man named Lutters died

I don’t miss the fear
The sirens and warnings
Walls rattling from explosions
The anger and frustration
Of never knowing where death was hiding
Of being a rolling, glowing target
That couldn’t even fight back

I don’t miss accepting the facts
If I do the wrong thing, my men and I might die
If I do nothing, my men and I might die
If I do the right thing, my men and I might die anyway
And just because we survived this mission
Doesn’t mean the next one won’t be our last

And yet there is a longing
To step back into that world
And feel the threats and dangers
To be totally alive, seconds and inches from death
As the kill zone passes outside my window
To live in the land where why doesn’t matter
And the only questions are how
And for how long

I cannot explain this
To myself or anyone else
Not to my children, not to my wife
In whose arms I find a peace
That could never possibly exist
In the land of unthinking hatred and mangled dead
Where I used to be

So I turn around once more
Stand solidly in the world where I belong
Breathe air without smoke and sand
Live as if I’m going to live
Not as if I’m about to die
Allow myself the freedom of happiness and security
That I hope I finally earned,
In that other world, not so long ago

I glance back at that year
And see it finally receding
The convoys going the other direction
The tracers angling away from me
Angry orange flashes dulling to grey
Painful noise muted by time and distance
Tensed muscles uncoiled, overloaded mind eased
My finger no longer on a trigger
My life no longer a number

Here I stay
Life not filled with terror
Until the time comes
To spin up, and return to the kill zone
While I count the days
Until I’m home again.

Available in print and as an ebook from Amazon.com and Tactical16.com. Available electronically from iTunes/iBooks and Barnesandnoble.com.

Every time I turn around, I’m slapped in the face by stories about PTSD, suicide, or military sexual assaults. Not long ago I mentioned to a civilian that I had been in Iraq. He looked concerned and asked, “Are you okay?”, as if being a veteran automatically means I’m a basket case. It doesn’t. In fact, I and the vast majority of vets I know are doing quite well.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t seem to notice the huge number of veterans they see living normal lives. And nobody pays attention to the Army’s statistics showing that the vast majority of suicides are Soldiers who never deployed. The public isn’t listening to the female Marine captain in the Judge Advocate General office who points out the extraordinary leaps required to extrapolate 26,000 sexual assaults from a flawed survey (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323582904578484941173658754.html ["The Pentagon's Bad Math on Sexual Assaults"]). No, it’s much easier to just consider us an army of psychologically damaged sexual deviants.

The supposed cause of this damage is our experience in combat. I wasn’t aware until I came home from Afghanistan that simply being in combat destroys one’s soul. But, what do I know? All I did was serve in combat. I didn’t study it in a classroom, or something serious like that.

I get the impression that the public holds a mental “PTSD stamp”. Whenever they meet a veteran of the War on Terror, the stamp comes down. “Oh, you served in the war? Thunk! Uh-huh. PTSD.”

I hate to contradict the media narrative, but it certainly seems to me that most veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are living normal lives. God forbid I shatter the cherished beliefs of anyone who hasn’t served, but gosh darn it, I just don’t feel like the war screwed me up. And I wish people would stop assuming my wartime service makes me tainted meat.

So I’m going to make a statement. Even though this will likely raise a few eyebrows, I’m going to say it anyway. Because it’s true.

I liked being in combat. No, I loved it. I went on every mission hoping for a firefight. I volunteered for dangerous missions I didn’t have to go on. I was disappointed when we didn’t get into a contact. It’s not an exaggeration to say I have never been more satisfied in a job than I was as a Soldier in combat.

That doesn’t mean I was the best Soldier in the world; I wasn’t. I don’t claim I was great at being in combat, I just loved it. I also know that I have the luxury of having enjoyed combat, because all of mine was at a distance. The men who cleared houses in Fallujah probably feel different about combat than I do. Some veterans undoubtedly hated being shot at. But when I think back to the fights I was in, I don’t shudder in fear. I smile in satisfaction. I cherish the memory.

No, that doesn’t make me psychologically damaged. It means I discovered what other men have discovered throughout thousands of years of history. I learned that combat is exhilarating, challenging, intense, the realm of men whose dedication to their cause and comrades would make any Fortune 500 CEO look lazy by comparison. In battle I found a sense of meaning that would have made my death, should it have occurred, worth it.

This discovery didn’t damage me. It enlivened me. It gave additional purpose to a life I thought was purpose-filled already. And every brush with death highlighted the importance of my wife and children, made me appreciate everything waiting for me back home.

Yes, I had terrible days in the wars. I have changed in significant ways since I was called up the first time in 2004. To say I’m not the same person I was before I deployed wouldn’t be accurate, but differences are there. War leaves a mark on everyone who truly experiences it. For some people, that mark is permanent, disfiguring and life-changing. For others it’s a temporary redness, no more severe than the sting of a slap on bare skin. I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum; not crippled but not untouched, slightly marked but happy to carry on normal life.

I’d like to remind America that we grew up surrounded by veterans of terrible combat in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Most of those men, who lived through the horrors of such battles as Tarawa, the Chosin Reservoir or Operation Junction City, were as much a part of our communities as any lifelong civilian. I grew up across the street from a World War II veteran and two Vietnam veterans. For many years, both my next door neighbors were Vietnam vets. Almost all my great uncles had served in World War II or Korea. What stood out about almost all these men was their utter normality. That normality is also evident in the vast majority of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I like to think those we lost, had they survived, wouldn’t have been considered somehow lesser for their service. In Afghanistan, the casualty that affected me most was of a man I never met. He was a Marine Corps pilot serving on the ground as a forward observer, a Naval Academy graduate who had been married less than a month earlier and died a hero’s death only seventeen days after arriving in Afghanistan. If he had survived his deployment, he could only have gone on to be a dedicated husband, father, leader and citizen.

Today isn’t a day to cry over pitiful victims whose deaths in combat saved them from being emotional cripples. Today is that Marine pilot’s day. It’s a day to honor men and women who so loved their country and comrades, they sacrificed their own full and bright futures in order to defend ours. They literally gave their lives for us.

On this Memorial Day 2013, I’d like to ask anyone reading this to keep something in mind: we veterans of the War on Terror weren’t forced into anything. We volunteered for combat service which in many ways made us better people. We aren’t, in general, suffering in silence and desperate for a way to stop the emotional agony. We’re not on the verge of suicide. And we damn sure aren’t sexual predators.

So please, stop with the pity. Stop walking on eggshells around us. Stop thinking war crushed the life out of us. It didn’t. It made many of us better citizens. Better Americans.

Happy Memorial Day to my military brothers and sisters, to all those who have lost loved ones in our nation’s service, and most of all to those men who died bravely on our shared fields of battle.

When my current police department hired me I had pretty good qualifications: ten years military service, two years college, three years prior law enforcement. I breezed through the academy. Despite competing with cadets who had bachelors’ or masters degrees, I graduated number one academically and number three overall. During field training I passed my evaluations on the first try.

Later, while I was on my probationary period, I was on patrol with another officer. We met a friend of his for lunch. I had never met the guy before. He was a cowboy type, blond and muscular.

I introduced myself. The friend shook my hand and asked me, “What’s your last name again?”

“Hernandez.”

“Oh,” he said, with a disgusted sneer. “I know how you got your job.”

I was taken aback. I stared at him, not quite believing I heard what I knew I heard. I tensely answered, “No, I got my job because I’ve got military service, college and prior law enforcement. It wasn’t because of my last name. And I graduated near the top of my class.”

“Sorry. Just kidding.”

I was pissed. But I had to admit something: I understood the comment. For decades, stories have circulated about officers being recruited for their ethnic background rather than their capabilities. Some of the stories have been true. I had earned my place in the academy and earned my place on the street, but that officer had looked on me as another “affirmative action cop”.

As angry as I was, I knew he had reason to be angry and cynical as well. Because of lowered hiring standards, he didn’t know who to trust. He wasn’t sure who was qualified and who had been hired to keep up appearances. And he knew unqualified officers might fail him someday, when his life depended on them.

Why do I tell this story now? Because a lot of other people are about to experience the same thing. I’m not talking about minority cops. I’m talking about women who volunteer for combat arms in the military and earn their way through training. When they get lumped in with females who shouldn’t have passed but were pushed through anyway, they’re going to feel a lot like I did that night.

Lately the debate over women in combat has been aggravating the crap out of me. I’ve read several articles and comments about women in combat, and bitten my tongue at the myriad stupid claims: male and female physical fitness standards in the Army and Marines are already the same (they’re not), a soldier working on a huge base is in the same danger as a soldier outside the wire (he’s not), or “The military has finally recognized that there are no line drawn battlefields anymore where they could put the ‘girls’ in the rear. If you carry a weapon, you are in the thick of it” (ridiculous horsecrap). I’ve tried responding on sites like the Huffington Post, but gave up. Many of the people driving this debate don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. And they’re not interested in learning.

So let’s make something clear, which is a point some people don’t get: there is no ban on women in combat. There’s a ban on women in combat arms. That’s a big difference.

For more than ten years, women have been regularly going outside the wire, getting into firefights, and suffering casualties. They’ve served as vehicle drivers, vehicle gunners, engineers, medics, civil affairs specialists, communication specialists and pilots, among other jobs. Those are all crucial combat support roles, and those who fill them, male and female, deserve respect. But women aren’t serving in combat arms, in jobs whose sole purpose is to engage the enemy. They’re not infantry, tankers, scouts or artillery soldiers.

Apparently, much of the public decided they wouldn’t stand for this horrible military inequity, and did something about it. Loud screams about military gender equality came mostly from people who I suspect aren’t veterans, don’t know anyone in the military, and generally view the armed forces with disdain.

Their voices were heard. Voices from people like Marine Captain Katie Petronio, who actually was in firefights and concluded women are not suited for sustained combat, were ignored. As Captain Petronio wrote in an essay, “I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality.” During twenty-four years of service in both the Marines and Army, I haven’t heard it either. But that doesn’t matter. Despite the lack of military voices demanding change, we’ve received the warning order and are preparing to accept women into combat arms. The march toward equality has begun. Yay.

Although my tone might suggest otherwise, I’m not against women in combat arms. In addition to knowing some awesome, physically fit women who could do it, I’ve seen a couple of them do it. Most stories about vicious infantrywomen in foreign armies are as mythical as the plucky, just-as-tough-as-the-guys female character in movies like Battle Los Angeles. But some of the stories are true.

In Afghanistan, the French allowed certain women to serve with the infantry. One I met was assigned to a mortar team. She was in fantastic shape, and according to my French friends was competent, brave and never complained. Another was on a search team. She went on infantry missions, carried her ruck without problems, and once helped carry a wounded civilian to safety while under fire. So nobody can convince me it’s impossible for a woman to be a good combat arms soldier.

In this respect I actually disagree with many of my infantry friends, who see nothing good about female infantry. I was a tanker and scout, but never infantry. I seriously consider what experienced infantrymen have to say. Many of them point out problems we already have with gender integration, and the issues with pregnancies, love triangles and sexual harassment that are guaranteed to result when you add females to combat arms. Nobody should be shocked that young, physically fit men and women, brimming with life and facing death, find escape and comfort in each others’ arms (and beds).

Accepting women into combat arms will require a major behavioral adjustment for both male and female soldiers. Plenty of people with valid experience don’t think the benefit females bring is worth the upheaval. But I believe adherence to the American ideal is worth the trouble. This is the land of opportunity and equality of opportunity. I have a hard time telling someone, “You’re qualified, capable and willing to do the most dangerous jobs for your country. No thanks. You don’t have a penis, so take a hike.”

So my issue isn’t with women in combat arms. My issue is with the stupid, utopian, willfully blind belief that men and women are the same across the board and can do the same things, that one gender is no more physically capable of combat than the other. That’s just not true. This isn’t about racism/sexism/any other -ism, no matter how hard some proponents of gender integration try to smear opponents with those terms. This is about two realities: battlefield and physiological.

This point has been made by several other writers, but it’s worth repeating. Males and females are separated in professional sports. The fittest female in the world isn’t a match for the fittest male. People whose entire lives are committed to producing peak human performance realized this long ago. Female basketball players are in fantastic shape, but they’re not on the same plane as male players. Plenty of female boxers could beat me senseless, but they wouldn’t have a chance against Mike Tyson. Even in noncontact sports like sprinting, males and females are separated.

Is this because the sports world is full of sexists? Or is it because experts in human physical capability know men and women aren’t equal? But maybe we should ignore gender segregation in sports, and advocate total gender integration in combat arms. After all, if integration fails in the military, it’s only lives that will be lost. Not something important, like the Super Bowl.

Some say women have proven physical differences don’t matter. Women in Iraq and Afghanistan have already shown they can handle combat. Yes they have been in combat, but that doesn’t tell the whole truth. The roles filled by women in the War on Terror have been, generally speaking, much less physical than combat arms jobs.

In Iraq I was on a convoy escort team, and spent almost all my time outside the wire sitting in a humvee. When I had to get out it was just to check the area around my vehicle. Plenty of female Soldiers and Marines, and even a handful of female sailors and Air Force women, had the same job.

Yes, some of us were in combat. We were shot at, had IED strikes or near misses. But we weren’t running around under fire in 130 degree heat with eighty pounds of gear. We weren’t maneuvering heavy artillery into position, frantically trying to get rounds downrange and keep a friendly unit from being overrun. We weren’t pulling fifty-five pound HEAT rounds from an Abrams tank ammo rack, flipping them and throwing them into a breech every ten seconds.

Our war was slow-paced and physically undemanding. We left one safe spot, drove hours through danger areas, and finished at another safe spot where ice cream and Green Bean coffee waited. We did not face physical stresses and dangers equal to infantrymen patrolling Sadr City, Fallujah, or Diyala. Many of us, male and female, were physically incapable of doing what the infantry did. If anyone looks at a the typical woman’s combat experience and thinks it’s the same as being in combat arms, they’re either unforgivably ignorant or biased to the point of blindness.

And if someone buys the “modern war is so high-tech that physical strength doesn’t matter” myth, I invite them to join an infantry patrol in Kapisa province. Carrying eighty pounds of gear for three hours up a mountain is nothing like operating a drone. There’s nothing high-tech about an exhausted soldier straining to run under crushing weight while people are shooting at him.

So how do we make military gender integration work? My idea, which the military will likely not listen to, is this: allow women into combat arms, but only after they’ve passed a selection process. Let women who prove themselves capable enter those fields. While they’re in the training courses, maintain the exact same training and performance standard for females as for males. Train females with the understanding that their gender won’t make their load lighter, their performance expectations lower, or their chances of survival higher. Combat arms females will face equal risks in combat, so they should face equal challenges in training.

That way only the best-qualified women would even try it, and the graduation rate for those women would likely be close to the male graduation rate. Female graduates would be viewed as “real” infantrywomen, scouts, tankers or artillerywomen. They wouldn’t have an experience similar to mine. Male soldiers wouldn’t automatically doubt their ability.

But what’s the military probably going to do instead? It’s going to listen to hysterical voices speaking from horribly invalid experience as “equality for everyone” protestors. It’s going to go along with the ridiculous untruth about males and females being exactly the same in all aspects. It’s going to open combat arms to females the same way it’s open to males. And when a class of 100 males and 100 females has twenty male and eighty female failures, the military is going to quietly tell the instructors, “Go easy on the females. Their failure rate makes it look like we’re discriminating against women. We can’t have that.” And the next class’s female failure rate will magically be the same as the male failure rate.

If we choose the appearance of equality over actual quality, we know what it will produce. In future battles, good people will die because “soldiers” in their units will fail. And when, not if, that happens, people who ranted and screamed about equality will suffer none of the consequences. They won’t be overrun because artillery soldiers couldn’t set their guns up quickly enough. They won’t burn because a loader couldn’t feed a tank main gun fast enough. They won’t be pinned down, flanked and massacred because soldiers in a quick reaction force couldn’t carry their loads far enough.

Those who protest loudest about equality while having nothing invested in the outcome won’t be bothered. They don’t serve, their children don’t serve, their friends don’t serve. The casualties won’t be theirs to mourn. And some of those casualties will be qualified, capable women, who earned their way into combat arms and into combat.

Those women deserve better than to be failed by soldiers who should never have been at their side. They deserve better than the “equality” of being just as dead as the soldiers around them. They deserve a fair shot at being combat troops, they deserve the right to earn their way into combat units. And they should serve only with other soldiers who have truly earned that same right.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/veteran-reports-of-recruitment-tricks-and-trauma-m/nWxRF/

Veteran: Reports of recruitment tricks and trauma misleading

By Chris Hernandez

Two years ago I attended a presentation by a woman who advocates “selective conscientious objector” status. In other words, she believes service members should be able to say, “I’ll go to war in Afghanistan because it’s moral, but I won’t go to Iraq because it’s immoral.”

The woman, a former college professor, gave an interesting speech. She showed a good grasp of the difficulties we faced in Iraq, and gave solid reasons why troops could morally object to a specific war. I had initially been against her proposal, but once she explained it I wasn’t opposed.

Then the question-and-answer session began. An audience member asked, “Why should any of these troops be conscientious objectors? They all volunteered. The draft ended decades ago.”

The woman’s answer was like nails on chalkboard. “Well, there still is a draft. There’s the poverty draft, where the military sends poor kids to war. And the stop-loss draft. And there’s also,” she said, just before plunging a knife directly into my gut, “the National Guard draft. Those people are supposed to be helping out during hurricanes and tornadoes, they don’t join the military to go to war.”

At that point my wife had to calm me down. I’m a 17-year National Guard soldier and served six years in the Marine Corps Reserve before that. I voluntarily went to Iraq in 2005 and volunteered for Afghanistan in 2008. I went to war, twice, with many thousands of National Guardsmen and never heard even one say, “We’re not supposed to go to war.”

I met her outside and argued against her depiction of our service as a draft. It’s not only poor kids in the military, and the possibility of being stop-lossed — having one’s term of service involuntarily extended — is spelled out in the contract when we join. Calling anyone’s service today a “draft” is at best ignorance, at worst an outright lie.

Specifically though, I wanted to argue with her about the alleged National Guard draft. We in the Guard are volunteers just like all other soldiers. And the Guard has almost all the backup combat arms units, which aren’t very effective at fighting natural disasters. No matter how many rounds they fire at a hurricane, tanks and artillery can’t stop it.

The woman insisted that people who join the Guard don’t want to go to war. Several other audience members joined in on her side. Eventually I found myself in a circle of about eight people, none of whom had ever served in the Guard (only one said he had served in the military, but claimed to have been a Navy SEAL, so take that for what it’s worth). All of them insisted to me, the only National Guard war veteran among them, that people join the Guard so they won’t go to war. And gosh darn it, didn’t I realize they were trying to help me, trying to make sure I didn’t get sent to war again?

In the years since that depressing, frustrating conversation, I’ve heard many comments from people who seem to have similar thoughts about us. We’re poor minorities who joined the military because we had no other options. We couldn’t find a job in this economy. The Army tricked us into going to Iraq. We didn’t want to be there.

Last year, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” was published. This novel about soldiers serving in Iraq, written by someone who never served in the military, became an award-winning best-seller. All the soldiers in the book — every one — come from tragic backgrounds. The author even uses the phrase “bottom third percentile” to describe them.

Recent media stories about veterans overwhelmingly focus on two things: post-traumatic stress syndrome and suicides. Both are serious problems and legitimate concerns. But the constant stories about those two subjects completely overshadow stories about successful veterans, and hide the fact that the vast majority of us aren’t suffering any ill effects from our wartime service. The public might be forgiven for thinking we’re all traumatized to the point of suicide by the wars. Newspapers and television constantly remind them that we’re damaged, broken, desperate for any way to stop the suffering. We’re victims, after all.

A few months ago filmmaker Michael Moore wrote, “I understand why so many (troops) enlisted after 9/11. Sadly, many of them were then trapped and sent off to invade Iraq. I felt for all of them. I understood those who joined because of a lousy economy.”

Us poor, pitiful saps. We mass of desperate, victimized children, unable to do anything worthwhile with our lives, were trapped by the military and sent to war against our will. Oh, the tragedy.

Of all the misconceptions surrounding the Iraq War, none is more frustrating to me than the “soldiers are victims” myth. It’s a lie I want to dispel, right now. The American public should make no mistake about this: We chose this fight. We chose this war. We’re responsible for putting ourselves there.

Some people will undoubtedly disagree with this. Someone will bring up their friend who joined the military just for college money, or a cousin who only wanted to be a mechanic, or someone who was “tricked” by their recruiter and never expected to go to war. Simply put, those stories mean nothing. We joined the military as free men and women. We wore camouflage and helmets in training. We fired rifles and machine guns. We threw grenades. We trained with bayonets. We knew we would do those things when we joined. We didn’t suddenly discover, to our horror, that we had joined a warfighting organization. Volunteering for an organization dedicated to fighting wars, and then complaining about being sent to war, is either moronic or cowardly or both. Those opinions are worthless to me.

My true feeling about the wars, which I don’t always express, is this: I can’t imagine having missed them. My life would have been diminished without them. The IED close calls, bullets that almost hit, supercharged radio calls of troops in a firefight, sudden orange flashes and shocks of adrenaline that meant an explosion had missed us, mind-crushing responsibility for the lives of others, all these things enriched my life.

When I tell people an Iraq or Afghanistan war story, the reaction I usually get is, “It must have been horrible to experience that.” Yes, sometimes it was. But missing those experiences would have been worse. Never leaving the wire with a group of men who would rather die than let each other down would have been worse. Never feeling a survivor’s adrenaline rush would have been worse. Never defending my values and country with my life would have been worse. I’m proud I did those things. I’m happy I was in the wars. Sometimes I take in the complicated stresses of marriage, children, finances and work, and long for the simple stress of avoiding bullets. Non-veterans probably won’t appreciate the beautiful purity of having life’s myriad worries reduced to just three: trying to kill the enemy, trying not to get killed, and trying to defend your brothers.

The public is constantly reminded of how much we veterans are suffering for our service. I’m here to remind the public of a counterpoint. We benefited from our service, and not just financially. We learned important lessons about the country, the world, our fellow soldiers, and most importantly, ourselves. We know what we’re capable of. We know some things are worth risking your life to defend, and we backed our words with action.

Nobody needs to pity us for that.

Available in print and as an ebook from Amazon.com and Tactical16.com. Available electronically from iTunes/iBooks and Barnesandnoble.com.

Note added 3/28/13: In the essay published by the Statesman there were several minor mistakes that I missed when I submitted it. When I reposted it here I first decided to leave all the mistakes in, but they’ve been bothering me so much I had to correct them. I figured the Statesman would have edited them out, but was surprised to see they left my essay exactly as screwed up as I wrote it. Lesson learned, if any more newspapers want to print my stuff I need to make sure and get it edited myself.

I and friends of mine, all of us non-fobbits, had countless run-ins with fobbits. We got screamed at by “Captain Safety” for driving three miles over the speed limit. We saw soldiers screamed at for wearing paracord bracelets. A soldier of mine was screamed at for not wearing a helmet, reflective belt and eye protection while driving a 4-wheeler on a FOB. Convoys were stopped as they left a gate so a senior fobbit sergeant could make sure nobody was wearing white socks. A combat veteran cavalry scout was screamed at by a fat female major leaving a PX because he didn’t salute her (and according to her, if he didn’t have enough situational awareness to see and salute an officer, how could he be trusted in combat?). Fobbits remind me of Gustav Hasford’s description of “lifers” in Vietnam: “They try to kill you on the inside.” It’s no exaggeration to say I’d rather worry about getting shot or blown up than deal with all the manufactured stress and nonsense you find on a FOB.

Of the three alleged “classics” about the Iraq War published this year, the others being Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, this was the only one I didn’t dread reading. Billy Lynn is a book about soldiers written by a liberal who was never in the military, which is like reading a book about sex written by a virgin. The Yellow Birds was at least written by a real Iraq vet, but it’s more of a Vietnam story that’s only vaguely connected to Iraq. Besides that, Powers seems to have caved to the publishing industry’s war fantasies rather than written an honest book. You can see my review of The Yellow Birds at http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/01/05/book-review-the-yellow-birds-by-kevin-powers/ and my reviews of Billy Lynn (yes, I detested the book so much I actually wrote two reviews on it) at http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2012/12/06/billy-lynns-bogus-journey/ and http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2012/12/24/billy-lynn-part-2-this-time-its-personal/.

Fobbit is the story of Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, assigned to the Army’s Public Affairs Office at Forward Operating Base Triumph in 2005. This book brought back a lot of memories, because in 2005 I made many trips to Camp Victory, which I’m sure is what FOB Triumph is based on. Many of the “fictional” incidents described in the book, such as a failed car bomb attack on a tank, a soldier shot by and then capturing a sniper, and the deaths of hundreds of religious pilgrims in a stampede, happened around the time I was there.

For the most part, Abrams did a great job of recreating the world of a fobbit in the Iraq War. Civilians might believe all of us who served in Iraq are grizzled, PTSD-crippled combat vets; they will, through this book, meet troops whose nearest brush with actual war was cowering from distant mortar blasts, passing combat soldiers in the chow hall and writing reports about other people’s real wartime experiences. Those with no understanding of the war will learn why many of us still feel so resentful when well-meaning people refer to all Iraq and Afghanistan vets as “heroes”.

Abrams also does a fantastic job of capturing the way PowerPoint presentations, computer teleconferences and overemphasis on staff functions have combined to suck the warrior mentality from the Army. Civilians may find Abrams’ description of fobbit life funny, but they won’t feel the same horrific revulsion we soldiers feel. Our combat soldiers have become more experienced and proficient at fighting a real war, while much of our leadership spends increasingly more time sitting in a cubicle on a huge base in a war zone. This is a horrible trend for the Army, and Abrams has done an admirable job of illustrating what it’s doing to us. The plot, in my opinion, was engaging but not that important; the value of this book to me was as an exposition of everything that’s wrong with our Army.

I’ve just described the primary strength of this book. The other strengths are that it’s funny (wait til you get to the part with “dick rabbit!”), interesting and a quick read. Abrams is a good writer, and he made the book flow well. As for weaknesses, there are a few.

This book has a few “outside the wire” episodes that were obviously written by, well, a fobbit. Most of the unrealistic bits will be missed by the average civilian reader. But for military readers like me, each little mistake was like biting into a chunk of gravel hidden in a bowl of mashed potatoes. Two-ton cars don’t “wedge themselves” under the treads of a sixty-ton tank; mortars don’t “totally vaporize” people; nobody is going to shoot someone in the head with a pistol from hundreds of yards away. The first real combat incident described in the book, a failed suicide car bomb attack on an American tank, is way overwrought with angst in addition to having technical inaccuracies. Each of these diversions from reality was unnecessary. The plot wouldn’t have suffered if Abrams had written truth instead of Hollywood fiction.

Something else I consider a weakness, although others will disagree, is that this book is without question a product of the current literary world. It insults all the right people. Rest assured, the idiots in the book are conservative and religious. I’m not Republican or Christian, but I’m getting sick of the constant anti-conservative and anti-religious references in novels (and movies, for that matter). Yeah, I get it; if you voted for “the Great White Bwana”, as President Bush is referred to in the book, or go to church, or watch Fox News, you’re a moron. You’re far beneath the literary elite who decide what gets published. Sure, whatever. Stop reminding me.

But by far, the worst thing Abrams did in this book was drop a casual reference to American soldiers possibly raping an Iraqi woman. And it served no purpose at all. It “might” have happened under an American truck, after an accident between an American convoy and Iraqi bus, while a crowd of Iraqis wandered around a nervous group of American soldiers. How the hell would that even be possible? Yes, I’m aware of a well-known incident where our troops committed a brutal rape and several murders. I’m aware crimes happen in every war. But this was a Jesse MacBeth moment, a line that plays to those who think our troops routinely commit war crimes. Google MacBeth; in an interview he “admitted” to committing mass murders with his unit in Iraq and was LOVED by the anti-war crowd for it. But then he was exposed as a poser who never served in Iraq.

If the “possible rape” incident had involved troops occupying an isolated Iraqi home maybe it could be plausible, but in the situation Abrams described it definitely wasn’t. I honestly have no idea why Abrams included it, except maybe to please people who think our troops are evil. It didn’t quite ruin the book, but it sure didn’t do anything for it either.

Now I’ll describe something in the book that maybe was a strength, maybe a weakness. I’m still not sure.

Interspersed throughout the book are the kind of references a fobbit would make about casualties. Gooding and his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Harkelroad, use terms like “road meat” to describe what’s left of American troops after an IED strike. Nothing was more grating to a combat soldier than to hear fobbits use dismissive terms about the risks we, not they, faced daily. I let each of these references cause just minor emotional irritation before dismissing them and moving on. But then I ran across one line that stopped me in my tracks and almost made me quit the book.

Late in the book, Harkelroad is pondering how the media will treat the 2000th American death of the Iraq War. He hopes it will be something heroic and noteworthy, but prays that “Number Two Thousand wouldn’t be just another bland, run-of-the-mill death – blah blah patrol struck an IED in the neighborhood of blah blah, killing Private Joe Blah Blah.”

That line hit me. I was in Iraq for the 2000th death. I could have been that 2000th pile of “road meat”. Harkelroad’s comments took me back to similar sentiments I heard in Iraq.

In October of 2005, the month we lost “Number Two Thousand”, my driver and I stopped by our battalion aid station for supplies. An older fobbit medic was at the aid station. He eagerly waved us over to look at something on his computer. “Check this out, guys. I got this from a regular Army medic at Camp Victory. Whenever one of our guys gets killed, they take pictures of the wounds that killed them.”

He started flipping through a slide show. My driver and I looked in silence at the end result of mortal gunshot wounds, carnage caused by IED and car bomb blasts, fatal burns. As he proudly showed the pictures, the medic gave a running commentary: “Oh oh, that guy without a face won’t be picking up chicks at the bar anymore. And that one’s gonna have trouble playing soccer with no legs. Hah hah, and that one – ”

That pissed me off. I cut the medic off with “Why are you showing us that crap? I still have another God damn month of missions left. I guess you think it’s real f**king funny, but this s**t’s not going to happen to you. It still might happen to me.”

The medic started to apologize. I walked out. I still get angry every time I think about it. Abrams’ line about an “IED hitting blah blah patrol, killing Private Blah Blah” could have been about me, or my driver, or gunner, or any number of guys I cared for like brothers. That line took me back to the slideshow and conversation with that fobbit medic, and made me wish I had punched him.

And the thing is, I wasn’t mad at the fictional Colonel Harkelroad. I was mad at author David Abrams. He was an actual Public Affairs fobbit and likely used terms like “road meat”, or referred to our dead troops as “Private Joe Blah Blah”. That made that particular line hard to take.

But it’s fiction. I know better than to believe an author means everything a character says. And I have to admit, Abrams wrote something that moved me. It affected me so much I had to share an almost tearful moment with my wife, admit to her (and myself) how scared I had been of dying over there. It takes a good writer to do that.

Despite my mostly petty complaints, this book is definitely worth reading. It’s the only one of the three supposed Iraq classics that deserves to become a classic. It’s also the only one I paid for, or would pay for. It’s not perfect, but hell, mine isn’t either. If I ever have the chance to meet Abrams, I’ll call BS on some of what he wrote and challenge him on a few other things. But I’ll also congratulate him for writing a good story about our war.

Edited to add: I apologize for the typos in the original post. I was trying to get this finished as my wife yelled at me to hurry up so we could go shopping.

I did my best to be openminded as I read it. I was told that I would probably feel differently about the book after I read it. So I finished it, and reached some conclusions:

First, nothing in the book violates the laws of physics. That’s good. Just about everything in the story [infantry sergeant pins a private to the wall and kisses him lovingly on the mouth after a firefight/Billy almost has sex with a Cowboys cheerleader in the stadium during the game/stadium cops treat the soldiers like crap/fans make fun of the troops and nearly provoke a fight/troops are forced to participate in the Destiny’s Child halftime show – and get all freaked out from PTSD!] is severely unrealistic, but, I suppose, not impossible.

Second, I was wrong when I said the soldiers were portrayed as morons. They’re not – exactly – morons. Losers with no self control is a better description.

Please keep in mind that none of what follows is a criticism of Fountain’s writing. The man is a good writer, and his nearly twenty years of dedication and perseverance show. Despite the fact that I had to hold my nose at the subject matter, I actually enjoyed parts of it and finished it in about a day and a half. I even laughed out loud at one line of dialogue where the squad leader, Sergeant Dime, messes with a Hispanic soldier about the Battle of the Alamo.

Unfortunately, other than that and a few other lines, Fountain displays almost no understanding of our troops. I was told by more than one reviewer that Fountain shows the troops to be intelligent and fully aware of their situation; unfortunately, this partial list of incidents/descriptions seems to refute that.

-Two soldiers get into a wrestling match on the floor of a gift shop, in their dress uniforms
-Two soldiers get high on marijuana with a waiter at the football stadium just before making a public appearance at the game
- A soldier tells his mother to buy a $100,000 vehicle because he might be part of a movie deal (and of course she buys it, because she’s a dumbass too)
- The entire squad runs around an end zone throwing passes and tackling each other, without permission from the stadium personnel, in their dress uniforms
- The entire squad gets into a fistfight with a crew of roadies in front of 70,000 people, again in their dress uniforms
- A soldier chokes out a fan in front of thousands of people in the bleachers
- A soldier gets high on Valium and sings out loud to passing strangers (in his dress uniform, in the stadium)

And so on. I may be the only person who feels this way, but if I saw a group of soldiers acting like that I would be embarrassed for the Army.

On the other hand, I guess when you assume all soldiers come from the lowest rung of society, you expect or forgive moronic behavior. Once again, I was told that Fountain did not describe soldiers as being low class losers. Then I ran across this passage, describing the backgrounds of soldiers in Billy Lynn’s squad:

“On Holliday’s last visit home before shipping out, his brother told him, I hope you f**king die in Iraq. When Mango was fifteen his father cracked his skull with a wrench, and Mrs. Mango’s comment was, So maybe now you’ll stop pissing your father off. Dime’s grandfather and one of his uncles were suicides. Lake’s mother was an OxyContin addict who’d done time, his father a dealer who ditto. When Crack was eleven years old his mother ran off with the assistant pastor of their church. Shroom, he barely had a family. A-bort’s father had been the deadbeat poster dad for the state of Louisiana, and Syke’s father and brothers blew up their house cooking meth.”

As I mentioned in my previous post about this book, Fountain said, “I don’t doubt that there are plenty of current and former soldiers who’ve read a couple of pages and chucked it aside in disgust or boredom.” When I read the passage about the soldiers’ backgrounds, coming soon after Billy Lynn’s “Go to prison or join the Army” story, I almost threw the book aside in disgust. If I needed confirmation that Fountain portrayed soldiers as the “bottom third percentile” (he does in fact use that line toward the end of the book), I believe I’ve found it. And it is an insult.

Before anyone says it; yes, there are many soldiers who come from rough backgrounds. But it’s not all of us. There are actually people in the military from wealthy families, who have no criminal background, who didn’t grow up around violence, who had every opportunity in the world to do what they wanted and chose to serve. The military is a true melting pot. An honest portrayal of soldiers would show the blend of backgrounds, not highlight only those with tragic childhoods. I’m sure Fountain would scoff at a fictional squad of soldiers who are all saints determined to enter the priesthood, but his version of our troops is just the other side of that same unrealistic coin.

My instinct tells me that Fountain did in fact speak to a few soldiers about the Army and Iraq, and learned a few bits and pieces of truth from them. But when they left information gaps, Fountain simply filled those gaps with old Vietnam stereotypes (see the references to choosing prison or the Army, casual drug use and dead-end childhoods). While reading this book, my head was often filled with the immortal Paul Hardcastle’s words, “In World War Two the average age of the combat soldier was twenty-six. In Vietnam he was nineteen.” I was reminded of this every time Fountain reminded the reader that poor Billy Lynn was only “nuh-nuh nuh-nuh nineteen!” And when Billy’s sister begs him to desert the Army and allow an anti-war group to hide him.

I guess the whole deserting the Army thing is realistic. After all, just as the Vietnam War produced thousands of draft-dodgers and deserters, the Iraq War produced a handful of celebrated cowards who refused to honor contracts they voluntarily signed. Sure. It’s the same thing. And your average soldier would seriously consider becoming a deserter, just like Billy Lynn did. All of us draftees truly hate the Army and the war, and just want to escape, right? Actually we’re volunteers, and many of us went to great lengths to have an opportunity to serve in combat. But let’s just ignore that irritating little truth.

I should point out that not all the flaws in Fountain’s description of our troops relate to Vietnam stereotypes. He did get ambitious and reach all the way back to World War II at one point. This bit of nostalgia arises as Billy casually mentions that before going to Iraq, his unit was briefed that they should all expect to die.

Folks, there are certain things we say about survival in the military, such as we don’t train to die, don’t ever give up, and nobody’s dead until the medic says he’s dead. Maybe certain individuals get fatalistic, and the whole “they told us we’d die” thingy sounds really cool and ominous and all, but it’s just stupid. Any commander who said that to his troops would/should be kicked out of the Army in disgrace. It’s one thing to acknowledge a hard reality, that a unit should expect casualties. It’s another thing to tell your Joes you expect them to die. That’s just wrong. But on the plus side, we know that Fountain watched that neat-o scene from Band of Brothers where the crazy lieutenant tells a soldier he should consider himself dead already.

To be fair, Fountain doesn’t only insult and caricaturize soldiers. He shares the wealth with many other groups as well. In this story,

- Conservatives are IDIOTS
- Wealthy people are IDIOTS
- The general public is made of IDIOTS
- People who watch Fox News are IDIOTS (Billy’s father, perhaps the most odious character in the book, does nothing but watch Fox News from his wheelchair)
- Devout Christians are IDIOTS
- NFL players and fans are IDIOTS

Many fans of Ben Fountain probably read that list and said, “Yeah, that’s all true” (which sort of proves the point I’m about to make). I don’t want to argue about all of it, but the last two points deserve some elaboration. I’m agnostic, no fan of religion. But throughout my life I have known and trusted a great many people who were devout Christians, Jews or Muslims. I don’t believe for a second that having faith requires low intelligence, or that it’s a simplistic mindset. While I can argue logic against faith, I understand why people have faith and how important it is to them. In Fountain’s book, I don’t recall a single reference to faith that wasn’t a backhanded insult.

Regarding the depiction of the NFL, I have to admit something: I liked it. I’ve never been a football fan, and never understood why athletes get paid such ridiculous amounts of money for tossing a ball around. Whenever I see two pro teams playing on TV, I hope they both lose (although I do like the Texans, mostly because they’re underdogs and thus far the players aren’t running around acting like spoiled bozos). So when Fountain has three football players in the locker room ask if they can go to Iraq for three weeks to “help”, then get angry when Billy tells them they’d have to join the Army (“We got jobs, this here our job, how you think we gonna quit our job and go join some nigga’s army? Fah like what, three years?”), I think it’s funny and real. It’s probably not real, it’s a caricature, it doesn’t paint an accurate picture of NFL players. But I like it BECAUSE I’M ALREADY PREJUDICED AGAINST THEM.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s a phenomenon I’ve already identified.

1) Reader has a biased, unrealistic view of a certain, anonymous group of people. [cough **soldiers!**cough]
2) Reader reads Billy Lynn and sees a caricature that confirms his biased, unrealistic view.
3) Reader thinks, “Gee, this book is so real!”

I know I’m biased against pro athletes. I understand I have a skewed view of the NFL. Therefore, I won’t write a review saying, “Fountain captured the football players perfectly”. He didn’t. Instead, he played to my prejudices. He preached to the choir. Aside from all the other complaints I have about unbelievable nonsense in this book, Fountain’s habit of preaching to his choir bothered me the most.

To sum things up: If you secretly think our troops are losers but won’t admit it except to your liberal friends, are anti-bush, anti-war, anti-religion, and feel the bulk of America’s population is made of morons who are far beneath you, you will love this book. You’re Fountain’s choir, and this book was written for you. But if you have a true, multi-dimensional view of our troops, if you see the flaws of our war effort but still support the cause, if you think this is a pretty damn good country all around, then don’t bother with this book. Because it’ll just make you angry.

One incident in Afghanistan had the capacity to scar me for life. Late one night I received a report about an IED that Afghan police found in a village. I’ll call the village Loy Kalay. My job was to make sure everyone in the that area was warned about the danger. This was a routine occurrence, so I took the normal steps of notifying the Americans at the command post, then notifying the French, then sending written reports. I went to sleep that night unconcerned; as far as I knew, everyone who needed to know about the IED had been warned.

The next morning, just after I woke up, one of my soldiers walked into the tent and asked, “Did you hear the French got hit by an IED?”

I hadn’t heard. He told me, “It’s really bad. An armored vehicle was completely destroyed and burned. One French Marine was killed, some others are probably going to die, and a bunch of other guys were wounded.”

I asked him, “Where did it happen?”

“Loy Kalay.”

I froze. For one of the only times in my life, I was completely unable to speak. Oh my f**king god, I thought. I f**ked up. Who did I miss? Who didn’t I tell about the IED?

I finally managed to force out more questions. After about ten seconds of keeping me in near-panic, my soldier shook his head, blinked and said, “Oh yeah, it was Loy Alkay, not Loy Kalay. Sorry.”

Loy Alkay was hours from Loy Kalay. I hadn’t messed up. The French weren’t hit by an IED that I failed to warn them about. In that moment I should have felt nothing but concern for my French brothers who were lost and wounded, and I did. But I also felt selfish relief at the knowledge that it wasn’t my fault. To this day those ten seconds, when I thought I had gotten soldiers killed, haunt me.

This happened about a month after a firefight that produced what I hope is unreasonable guilt. The two incidents got me thinking, and I began to form an opinion. My perception is that nonveterans believe trauma comes from having people try to kill you. I don’t think that’s true. I think events that produce guilt are what cause most trauma and PTSD.

Getting shot at can be kinda fun. Getting hit isn’t; I was close enough to people who were hit to know I didn’t want any part of that. But just getting shot at could be funny, exhilarating, thought-provoking, good-naturedly embarrassing, any number of positive things. Having someone die, or get wounded, or almost get wounded because of your mistake, however, produces nothing but negative effects.

As I stated earlier, I think I’m partially at fault for someone else’s PTSD. This story and this soldier have been on my mind for years. I haven’t tried to get in contact with this soldier, which is something else I feel guilty about.

One afternoon my team left Camp Victory, Baghdad, with a convoy of supply trucks. We rolled out the gate, down a long dirt road, and turned onto Route Tampa, which at that time was one of the most dangerous roads in the country. As soon as we turned into Tampa, far in the distance I saw black smoke rising.

Another convoy team from my company was about a mile ahead of us. One of their vehicle commanders called the command post on the radio and asked, “Do you have a report of an accident on Tampa? We see a vehicle burning ahead.”

The command post had no reports. The convoy ahead of us moved closer to the smoke. We listened to their vehicle commanders talk back and forth, trying to figure out what was burning. I wasn’t too concerned. Iraqis were always burning something, and also had a reputation as bad drivers. If a vehicle was on fire, it was probably the result of a civilian accident.

The next radio call froze my blood. The lead vehicle commander screamed, “It’s a burning humvee! A patrol just got hit!”

What I experienced over the next few hours isn’t all that important. My convoy was ordered to stop about a mile from the downed humvee. We heard on the radio that a car bomb had rammed it and killed the gunner. The other convoy team stopped to assist, and waited until an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team arrived. Apache helicopters buzzed through the air overhead, searching vainly for a target. The only enemy involved had voluntarily killed himself.

Hours later, after dark, the highway was reopened. We drove past the still-burning humvee. It was almost totally destroyed. The doors were blown off, frame rails jutted into empty space where the engine had been. Debris lay scattered across the highway. I watched flames devour the remains as we passed, then turned forward. And I saw, just for a moment in the headlights, a shoe with bone and flesh protruding, sitting upright in the road.

I sat quietly for a few moments, wondering if I had seen what I had just seen. Then I turned to my driver and asked, “Was that –?”

He cut me off with, “Yeah, it was.”

A few minutes later, an IED exploded well ahead of us. Just after the blast, tracer fire sprayed into the air. We stopped again, and convoys stacked behind us. Looking back, it should have been obvious that the insurgents were just trying to stop us. About thirty minutes later, the convoy behind us took fire and engaged in a brief firefight. It was the first time I had heard a shot fired in anger.

Eventually we got back to our base. The next day we discovered the car bomb attack had wounded three soldiers in addition to killing the gunner. We also discovered that a staff sergeant from our company had pulled the dead gunner from the burning humvee.

The staff sergeant was about my age, and like me had been in the military for sixteen years. I think he had been in the same unit his entire time in the National Guard. I was an attachment from another unit, but he was close friends with almost everyone in the company. He and I were friendly but not friends. He wasn’t the most emotional or approachable guy in the world, but had a reputation as a good soldier. I found him the day after the incident and asked him about it.

He sat down on his steps of his trailer, shook his head and ran his hands over his face. His description of the attack’s aftermath was brutal.

“Man, that was awful. I just couldn’t do anything. We stopped and I ran to the humvee, and the gunner was inside burning, and I couldn’t get to him. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and every time I tried to get through the fire and grab him, ammo would explode in my face. I was finally able to grab him and drag him out, and he was laying there dead and on fire. It was bad, man.”

I listened, shook his hand and told him he did everything he could. We parted ways, and as far as I knew he got over the trauma and moved on. We ran across each other periodically during the rest of the deployment, and he always seemed to be fine.

Several months later, not long before we came home, the staff sergeant led a convoy toward a base in Anbar province. This was a route his team had been on before. At one point in the route, convoys had to skirt the edge of a hostile town. We knew not to enter that town, because we would likely be attacked.

The staff sergeant, for a reason I don’t know, stopped at an intersection and directed his team to turn straight into the town. The other soldiers in the team knew they shouldn’t have taken that route, but were confused by the staff sergeant’s directions and did it anyway. Friends of mine on that team told me they were on edge, expecting an ambush. They were right.

RPG and small arms fire exploded around the vehicles. Some of the civilian truck drivers were wounded, and the convoy stopped. Soldiers had to get out and run to the stopped trucks under fire, so they could scream at the drivers to move out. Eventually the convoy rolled through the kill zone and got out of the town. None of the soldiers were injured, and fortunately the civilian truck drivers didn’t suffer any serious wounds.

Word about the ambush spread quickly. Most of us thought it was funny, as dealing with mortal danger was more or less the norm by that time. We jokingly asked how a team that knew a route could have made that mistake. A few days later, I saw the staff sergeant on our base and approached him.

Keep in mind, we had a pretty twisted sense of humor. Once, when I found out a friend was going on an extremely dangerous mission, I asked him for his computer password so I could use it after he got killed. He understood the humor, and laughed about it. So when I saw this staff sergeant, I felt compelled to jack with him about his error.

I approached him with a smartass grin and said, “Hey man, I heard you made a little mistake on a convoy recently.”

This guy always had an even keel, but he blew up at my joke. “Oh yeah motherf****r, like you’ve never made a f***ing mistake!”

I was taken aback. I had never seen him express anything near that level of emotion. That probably should have been a signal for me to back off. But this was years before Afghanistan, years before I learned firsthand what guilt can do. So instead, I responded with a laugh, “Sure I’ve made mistakes, but I never made that one!”

If I recall correctly, he walked away cursing. I don’t think we had another conversation after that.

Our deployment ended, we came back to Texas and I went home. I’ve kept in touch with several of the guys I went to Iraq with. And from them I heard bad news about the staff sergeant.

With only two years until retirement, the staff sergeant got out of the military. He moved, changed his phone number and broke ties with the friends he had served with his entire adult life. Some of those friends tried to contact him, and he rebuffed those attempts. I’m no psychiatrist, but I think this is avoidance, a symptom of PTSD.

When I heard that, I had to wonder: was I partly at fault for any problems the staff sergeant might have? Did the first incident, with the gunner who had been killed, weaken his defenses? Maybe. After he made a mistake and led his team into an ambush, did I reinforce his belief that he almost got his friends killed? Probably.

Was I a total asshole who did everything wrong, and deserved a good buttkicking for not helping a fellow soldier through a tough time? Absolutely.

Today I found out the staff sergeant is back in touch with several of his old friends, although he apparently hasn’t gotten back into the Army. Hopefully the story I was told about him was exaggerated. Maybe he got out of the Army for some completely legitimate reason that had nothing to do with PTSD. Maybe what I had to say to him after the ambush meant nothing and he doesn’t remember it.

Either way, I handled it wrong. Either way, my words at least had the potential to make things worse. Either way, I justifiably feel guilty about it.

Staff Sergeant H, I hope you’re doing well. I hope you let my words roll off you that day. I hope you aren’t suffering for your simple, honest mistake that mission, because you don’t deserve to. I’ve learned a lot about life, war, trauma and leadership since then. Back then I didn’t know guilt produces stronger, more evil demons than fear. Now I know I said stupid things to you that may have made things worse.

I’m sorry, man.

In a nutshell, here’s the plot:

Billy Lynn’s squad gets into a firefight in Iraq. One soldier is killed. Others perform heroic actions and are awarded Silver and Bronze Stars for Valor. A Fox News camera crew is embedded with the squad and puts video of the firefight on the internet. America goes nuts. Billy’s squad is brought back to the US for a “Victory Tour”. Hilarity ensues. The highlight of the Victory Tour is a trip to the Super Bowl. Billy and his soldiers are treated like royalty. However, everyone involved in the tour is just using the soldiers to achieve their own selfish goals. The greed and cruelty of American culture is exposed. Poor Billy and his teenage buddies are manipulated, employed as mere props, used up, tossed aside like trash, and sent back to Iraq.

Keep in mind, I’m trying to be objective about this book. I’ve only read the Barnes and Noble free sample, and checked out several reviews. One of those reviews, which spoke about the novel in glowing terms, was from a reviewer I trust (http://indiscriminatecritic.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/book-review-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk/). This book was a National Book Award finalist, and has just been nominated for a major award in the UK. I found out about the UK award when I went to Fountain’s scheduled appearance at a Houston bookstore, only to be told he cancelled because he was on his way to London.

I have serious problems with this book. The first is that Fountain isn’t a veteran. Yeah, I know, I’m not being fair. Any good writer can write a good war book if he does his research, right? How dare I expect The Great Iraq War Novel to have been written by an Iraq vet. I mean, it’s not like there are millions of Iraq vets around the country who are qualified to write about the war. Oh wait, yes there are. Well, I guess none of us are writing about it. Oh wait. . . yes we are.

Let’s forget all that. I’ve been assured that Fountain spoke to many veterans to make sure he got the technical aspects, jargon and attitudes correct. Fine. Personally, I think a virgin could study sex, interview thousands of people who have had sex, and still not know what sex is really like. But I’ll forget that too.

Next on the list of my hang-ups about this book is this minor, irritating little fact: the vortex of the story, the “Victory Tour” which exposes the greed, corruption and callousness of Bush, Cheney, Fox News and the American public, could not have happened. Billy Lynn and his soldiers are in the firefight one day, a few days later have already been awarded Silver or Bronze Stars, and suddenly find themselves on a plane back to America (with the body of their friend, no less). This is a ridiculous, nonsensical turn of events.

During my deployments, soldiers who received Army Commendation Awards for Valor, which are lower than a Bronze Star, waited months for the approvals to go through. One incident I know of happened in early August, and medals weren’t awarded until November. Another soldier who received a Bronze Star for the same incident didn’t get it until a year after the battle. U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer and Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta didn’t get their Medals of Honor until years after the fact.

In other words, soldiers don’t get awards for valor that quickly. There’s an approval process involved, and the higher the award, the longer the process. But, once again, I’ll forgive Fountain’s fictional transgression. Either he didn’t know this fact (and heaven forbid he ask an actual veteran) or he ignored it for plot purposes. I’m a fiction writer myself, and sometimes I’ve skirted the improbable for a plot’s sake. Not the impossible, but the improbable. Fountain went full impossible.

Next on the list is the Victory Tour itself. Iraq was an “economy of force” war, which means we used as few troops as possible to accomplish missions. Small units covered huge swaths of territory, and platoons that by doctrine were supposed to be in physical contact wound up holding isolated outposts miles from sister units. Guys like me on convoy escort teams had three humvees, with nine guys, to escort twenty or thirty civilian supply trucks through hundreds of miles of hostile territory. Every soldier on my team was in a critical role as gunner, driver or vehicle commander; we just didn’t have anyone to spare. In Fountain’s story, Billy’s squad is sent back to America for propaganda purposes, and the question of “who’s covering their sector?” is never addressed. Neither is that fact that our troops haven’t been pulled out mid-deployment for victory tours since maybe World War II.

I’ll forget that too. The fact that a situation probably couldn’t happen is no reason to exclude it from a novel. You can’t make a fictional omelet without breaking the eggs of reality.

Now I get to an obstacle that I just can’t overcome. As I’ve said, I’ve only read part of Fountain’s story. I refuse to buy the book. That’s because I’m hesitant to give money to someone who I think may be insulting our troops.

“Whoa”, you might say. “Why do you think Fountain insulted the troops? He’s actually standing up for the troops, trying to protect them from being used for political purposes. What’s wrong with that?”

Fair question. Here’s my answer. I think it’s insulting because, based on the little bit of the book I’ve read and the reviews I’ve seen, Billy Lynn and his fellow soldiers are portrayed as nothing more than child victims. They’re too young to understand the war, they don’t get the fact that they’re being used by the evil Bush administration to drum up political support, they don’t realize that people don’t actually care about them. They’re just too dumb to know what’s happening.

Lines like these, about one of the soldiers, have been highlighted by a reviewer: “He grew up in a ditch, he don’t know from being cold!” “It’s like giving a pig a Rolex, ma’am, he’s got no appreciation for the finer things in life.” According to the same review, this line is in the book: “Maybe this low-grade band of brothers isn’t ‘the greatest generation’, but they are surely the best of the bottom third percentile of their own somewhat muddled and suspect generation.”

Until I read this, I wasn’t aware I was part of the bottom third of anything. I have to wonder, was this characterization supposed to apply to all of us? I served with many highly intelligent, well-educated soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vast majority of those guys either had successful careers and families back home, or were waiting to complete their military service before starting families and beginning careers. They weren’t losers in the mythical “bottom third percentile”.

Come to think of it, is there some reason Fountain chose the name “Billy Lynn” for his protagonist? Does that name evoke a down-home redneckishness that Fountain thinks epitomizes all our soldiers? I’d bet the answer is yes.

My impression might be wrong. Maybe Fountain doesn’t think our troops are too stupid to know better. However, I’ve seen this kind of thinking so often I’m not surprised by it, and have come to expect it from highly-educated people. When my cynicism is flowing freely, I suspect much of their “support” for troops is actually pity. Pity for us poor, young, uneducated, mostly minority children who were tricked into joining the military because we had no other options.

I’ve heard a woman with a PhD speak of the “poverty draft”, which was the military’s alleged targeting of poor teenagers (according to her, “There are no recruiting stations in Beverly Hills”). People like her, who like Fountain were never in the military, seem to think they understand those of us who made the conscious decision to serve in the military during wartime. Gee, thank God they’re here to save us from our own decisions.

To Fountain’s credit, he acknowledged his lack of credentials during a November 13th New York Times interview: “Since I’ve never served in the military, never been in a shooting war, I felt like I had to earn the right to write a book like this. I’m still not satisfied that I had the right to do it.” He also said, after talking about receiving praise from vets, “. . . I don’t doubt that there are plenty of current and former soldiers who’ve read a couple of pages and chucked it aside in disgust or boredom. But I don’t hear from them, or at least I haven’t yet.”

Well, he’s hearing from me now. I’ll address the remainder of this post directly to Mr. Fountain, in the probably vain hope that he’ll actually read it and care what a combat vet has to say.

Mr. Fountain, I assure you that even though you never served, you have the right to write war novels. Likewise, even though I’m not a college guy, I have the right to write a book about what being in a fraternity is really like. In this country, anyone can write any stupid book about anything. The First Amendment, rather than anything we’ve done, guarantees it.

In the NYT interview, you mentioned that Leo Tolstoy wasn’t even alive during the Napoleonic era, yet still wrote War and Peace. You used this to prove your lack of military background doesn’t mean you can’t write a good war novel. However, Tolstoy had two huge advantages over you. First, he was an actual war veteran, having served in the Crimean War. Second, and more importantly, the soldiers he wrote about were dead. When his book was published, few if any veterans of the war he wrote about were alive to point out what was real and what was absolute crap. In a hundred years, someone can write a World War II novel about a lesbian who leads the invasion of Normandy from her wheelchair, and no WW2 vets will be around to figuratively stab the author in the face for it. Unfortunately for you, there are still plenty of Iraq vets around who may take exception to your depiction of who we are.

But what really pisses me off, or potentially pisses me off, is that you think you have the authority to tell anyone what the war/soldiers/homecoming/whatever is really like. If your book was comedy or something inconsequential, I wouldn’t be bothered. But from what I gather, you wrote this book to make a statement, to tell some alleged truth about our soldiers, our war, and our country. My gut reaction is that nobody who hasn’t been there can tell the truth about any war. You don’t have to be a soldier in a war to see this truth, but you have to at least visit. I don’t like what Ashley Gilbertson had to say about the Iraq war and our military, but at least his opinions came from firsthand experience.

My last word to you will be partly an apology. I haven’t read your book, so my suspicions and criticism may be completely off. I will read the book if someone gives it to me for free, or if I find it at my library. I’m willing to forgive if you’ll just acknowledge that central tenets of your plot, the light-speed awards and Victory Tour, could not have happened. I’ll praise your writing ability, and admit that I envy your talent. If I read the book and discover that you’ve done us justice, I’ll post an apology on my blog.

However, if I do read the book, this is what I expect to find: it was written by someone who knows nothing of the war, for people who know nothing of the war. I expect it to pander to an audience that openly despises the previous presidential administration and quietly despises our military. I suspect your novel has much in common with the ridiculous movie The Hurt Locker, which received fawning praise from nonveterans and was laughed at by those who had been in Iraq. I think your book will make Billy and his friends look like morons, rather than adult men who freely decided to serve their country in combat. I think you’ve done nothing more than offer us pity disguised as support. I think you’ve committed the same offense you accuse others of; the characters in your novel use Billy’s squad for political purposes, while you, by the same token, use us soldiers as devices to further your own career.

Not that I expect my feelings to matter to you; I’m sure that whatever complaints soldiers have about your book, you’ll happily walk across our backs to the bank and awards stage.

If your book shows that most of us live by the mantra, “My country was at war; I joined the military; I knew what I was doing,” then I congratulate you for your success. But I think you’ve portrayed us as something other than volunteers who willingly chose wartime service and all the pain, anger, and frustration it entails. If that’s the case, if you’ve shown us pity disguised as support, then you can kiss my “bottom third percentile”, proud Iraq veteran ass.

The day we arrived, the community was waiting for a different Marine combat unit to return from the war. Welcome Home banners were spread between light poles over roads, every bank and business in town had signs praising the Marines for their wartime service, and local civilians lined the streets waving American flags. We entered the base to the applause of people who thought we were returning heroes. In truth, we had watched the war on TV and only left home a week earlier. The community’s heartfelt gratitude, expressed to those of us who had done nothing, made me feel like a fraud.

Please don’t do that to other veterans today. Don’t make them feel guilty for taking the praise others deserve. And don’t think that you’re somehow slighting them by not calling them “heroes”. Keep in mind that most veterans aren’t heroes, they are simply men and women who have served honorably. There’s a big difference.

One night at a hotel bar before we went to Kosovo, I sat at a table with several Vietnam veteran police officers. They talked about their experiences and one-upped each other the way all Soldiers and cops do. “I was a Marine grunt at Khe Sanh, 67-68. It was rough.” “Oh yeah? I was artillery, near Da Nang during Tet.” “I was a slick pilot in the 101^st, my Huey got the crap shot out of it several times.”

During that conversation, one gray-haired officer sat with a smile on his face, listening to the ground-pounders brag. Then he spoke up in an exaggerated, flamboyant tone: “I was in the Air Force at Tan Son Nut air base. Got a great tan.”

In the twelve years and two wars that have passed since then, I’ve learned that the Air Force Vietnam veteran had a much more typical war experience than the others at the table. Even in World War II, only a very small percentage of our troops actually faced combat. Most troops who served in Iraq and many who served in Afghanistan never heard a shot fired, rarely left the relative safety of a firebase, never faced anything more dangerous than occasional, inaccurate rocket and mortar fire. Those who left the wire to engage the enemy on a regular basis were a relatively rare breed.

Because of this, many of us in the military are uncomfortable when we hear civilians refer to all service members and veterans as “heroes”. Heroism isn’t a requirement to simply be in the military, or to serve in war. The jobs I did in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were nowhere near the most dangerous jobs in those wars, may have required instances of bravery but didn’t demand heroism.

When I evaluate true heroism, I always look to those who served in the worst, hardest wartime situations. My great uncle Leo Moreno was in the Bataan Death March, but apparently never made it to a prison camp. In 1942 my great grandparents received a telegram that he was “Missing, Presumed Dead”. His little brother was a Marine at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, one of the Marine Corps’ legendary battles. Another of my great uncles was a paratrooper who jumped at Sicily, Normandy and Holland. I grew up across the street from a man who, as a 20 year old sergeant, took command of his platoon after it was overrun and led a counterattack against a North Vietnamese unit.

Those men were heroes. Most of us serving today aren’t. This weighs heavily on me every time someone shakes my hand and praises me for my service, because I’m worried they’re giving me credit for heroism that I haven’t earned.

This isn’t to say our troops haven’t made sacrifices. We all have. Many of us have given up time with families, missed births of children, been away when loved ones passed on. Marriages have crumbled under the strain of separation. Soldiers serving “safe” jobs have died when one of those random, occasional rockets landed close enough to envelop them in its killing radius.

But we aren’t all the same, haven’t faced all the same dangers, and don’t all deserve the same accolades. There are differences between those who face rare and random danger, those who go out daily to seek that danger, and those who willingly expose themselves to near-certain death in order to help others. Recognition of true heroism becomes diluted when a soldier who writes accounting reports at division headquarters is put on the same pedestal as a soldier who lost an arm throwing back an enemy grenade.

So what I’m asking is this: today, Veteran’s Day 2012, don’t call all veterans and service members heroes. If you meet someone who served or still serves and don’t know anything else about them, just shake their hand and thank them for their service. Don’t praise them for things they may have never done. Remember that most aren’t heroes, and even those who are probably don’t want to be reminded of it. Soldiers rarely earn the title “hero” on missions where everything goes right and all the good guys survive.

Heroism or not, this generation’s military service holds a deep meaning. Anyone who joined or reenlisted after 9/11 voluntarily joined a military at war. After the first few months of the Iraq War, they knew there is no completely safe job in the military. During my deployment to Iraq we had cooks and mechanics out on convoy escort missions. We saw Air Force and Navy convoy escort teams on the road. Units with the safe Cold War mission of driving supply trucks wound up performing some of the most dangerous missions and facing some of the most serious threats.

Every man or woman who left the wire, even one time, had the moment where they locked and loaded their weapon and mentally prepared for combat. Inherent in that act is at least the knowledge that you may have to sacrifice your own life for the lives of others. Some troops are more willing than others to make that sacrifice, but every single man or woman on every mission knows they may have to.

At the extreme end of that willingness to sacrifice are the rare cases where someone throws themselves on a grenade to save others. Somewhat less extreme are the thousands of cases of soldiers holding their positions in a dangerous, exposed area because someone has to cover that sector. Somewhere on that spectrum are Soldiers like my assistant team leader in Afghanistan, who yelled a warning to me to take cover from passing bullets even though he was in the open and more likely to get shot than I was. Somewhere on that spectrum is my friend DJ, who ran from his humvee to check on civilian truck drivers while his convoy was stopped and under fire. Those who never leave the wire may have to hold a perimeter during an attack, or leave the safety of a concrete bunker to account for their troops between rocket impacts. Even if a service member never leaves the United States, they still willingly assign their lives a lesser value than the lives of their comrades, and the lives of civilians. Other than jumping on a grenade, none of that is heroism. But all of it is service.

Those of us who serve or have served don’t deserve to be worshipped for the rest of our lives. The few who are truly heroes will stand out forever, but for most servicemen and women the military is just something that occupies a few years between high school and later adulthood. Most service members go on to lead lives indistinguishable from those who haven’t served. And we all know those few who were total screwups, joined the military, then came home and went right back to being screwups.

The one thing those different types of veterans have in common is one single decision they made: to put other people’s lives before their own. Some of them made that decision, never left the country and never had to test it. Some of them proved the seriousness of their commitment under fire thousands of miles from home. Whatever their experience, whether they proved their bravery in combat or never heard a shot fired in anger, whether they spent thirty years in the military and retired or served two years and did nothing but make bad life choices afterward, one special thing about veterans makes them worthy of your gratitude.

No nation can survive without those who are willing to defend the frontier against threatening hordes. A culture which lacks warriors willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good can expect to last no more than a few decades. When our veterans made that decision to place your life before theirs, even if it was just for a moment, they were the giants upon whose shoulders this great nation stands. And that selfless moment of service, not heroism, is what they deserve to be thanked for.

But here’s a secret: I’m not that pissed off at anyone’s politics. I haven’t felt the urge to write about how everyone who doesn’t support my candidate is an anti-American moron. I haven’t posted insulting diatribes about the opposition on social media. I haven’t declared that if the guy I don’t support wins, my country is doomed.

According to my Facebook friends, everyone I know is a drooling idiot. This is because about half my friends are conservative and half liberal. The conservatives are convinced liberals want America to become a slightly less free version of Stalinist Russia, the liberals are convinced conservatives want to kill and eat minority children. I’ve spent the last six months ignoring inflammatory posts intended to prove beyond doubt that the other side is moronic/evil/dishonest/whatever. Some of these posts proclaim that America has never in its history been more divided. I’ve learned that the current president accomplished nothing whatsoever during his term, and the challenger will accomplish nothing whatsoever if elected. No matter who we elect, they’ll drive the country over the “fiscal cliff”. The situation is hopeless. We’re doomed.

Listening to a rabid supporter of either party is like listening to a drunk who just got beat up in a bar fight: Officer, I swear, all I did was walk up to that gentleman and say “Hello sir, how are you?” and he hit me for absolutely no reason. Just like the totally innocent drunk who did nothing to provoke a fight, true believers from both parties seem convinced their candidates stand for all that is pure and holy while candidates from the other side are the embodiment of hellish evil. President Obama is a halo-adorned saint, but Governor Romney truly wants women to be forcibly impregnated; Governor Romney feeds starving puppies in India in his spare time, but President Obama truly wants the American economy to collapse so we can become a third world country.

So here’s my take: this is a load of hysterical nonsense. Americans have never been more divided? Someone has to be kidding. I’m fairly certain veterans of the Civil War would dispute that, as would those involved in the shooting at Kent State during the Vietnam War. As a conservative, I don’t feel the slightest bit threatened when I wander among liberals, even when I’m in military uniform. This isn’t the 60’s. Nobody spits on me and nobody is shooting protestors. If this horrible rift in American society exists, it’s somehow been kept hidden from me.

I have serious disagreements with my liberal friends. I voice those disagreements and sometimes have heated debates. At least on my end, that doesn’t mean I value their friendship any less or consider them to be somehow less American than me. When did we decide we shouldn’t socialize with those who don’t hold our exact beliefs?

Recently I’ve had discussions with a couple of friends who are voting for the candidate I oppose, because of his support for gay marriage. I first disagreed with them on that issue, and while I can’t say I support gay marriage now, they made reasonable arguments that at least convinced me I shouldn’t oppose it. Maybe more importantly, even though it’s not as big of a concern for me, I definitely understand how crucial it is to them. It is their single most important issue.

We all have our single most important issue. For my parents it’s immigration, for many people it’s the economy, for many of my liberal friends it’s social justice. As I mentioned in my previous post, my issue is probably Benghazi. But even as important as that issue is to me, I know other people have different focuses and come from different backgrounds, and for their own valid reasons hold other issues to be more important. That doesn’t make them, in my eyes, any less patriotic.

Unfortunately, a gay friend recently posted an article that said “If you vote for the other guy, please unfriend me. I won’t associate with you if you oppose something so important to me.” I believe in free speech, but if we ever decide to do away with the 1^st amendment I hope stupid posts like that are the first thing outlawed. This came from a guy I’ve known for almost thirty years, who I hung out with a lot when we were teenagers. He and I took divergent paths after high school and I haven’t seen him in decades, but if I were to see him today, I’d still consider him a friend. Whatever his politics, he’d still be welcome in my house, although he apparently feels the opposite way about me. I don’t agree with his vote on one issue, he therefore wants nothing to do with me.

I should clarify something here: when he says he won’t associate with anyone who votes for Governor Romney, I don’t believe him. I see more than a touch of internet tough guy-ism in almost every post that insults or ostracizes people with different beliefs. I’ll bet that back in the days when insults and ultimatums had to be delivered face to face, there were a lot fewer of them. But thanks to the wonders of modern technology, insulters and issuers of ultimatums can now get in people’s virtual faces without fear of having their teeth knocked out.

This technological protection has undoubtedly saved many sets of teeth, but it also leads good guys to say dumb things that they wouldn’t say in person. I am almost 100% certain that if this friend and I sat down together and talked, we would find common ground and preserve the friendship. And if we couldn’t find common ground, we could identify the limits of what we can and can’t talk about.

This whole “I don’t want people around who don’t agree with me” thing gets on my nerves, more so than any other aggravation associated with this election. It’s probably because it’s such a selfish point of view. The issues that drive my vote have to do with the safety and security of my wife and children. Some of them might have a direct impact on my survival. For someone to refuse to associate with me and dismiss what I hold dear, because it doesn’t align with what they hold dear, is pretty self-centered. And the same standard applies to me, when I assess the importance of what they value most.

Despite ideological differences, we Americans share way too many values to let an election fracture us. If the Taliban invaded America, Democrats and Republicans would be side by side, voting them out from the rooftops. Liberals would reload magazines for their conservative friends. Supporters of Governor Romney would build bombs with supporters of President Obama.

We need to remember that the worst Democrat candidate and the worst Republican candidate are still products of our culture and value system, they’re not two-headed aliens dedicated to the destruction of our way of life. I have more in common with President Obama than I do with an al Qaeda suicide bomber. My liberal friends share more traits with Governor Romney than they do with North Korean communists.

Therefore, I ask my friends and family, from all ends of the political spectrum, please chill the hell out. Drop the rhetoric. Realize that no matter who is elected tomorrow, we’re still citizens of the greatest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world. Our country can survive any one presidency, no matter how horrible you personally think it might be. For my liberal friends, we survived eight years under President G.W. Bush. For my conservative friends, we survived four years under President Carter. Another election down the road will balance out whatever injustice this election produces. The pendulum will swing to a side you favor, either tomorrow or within a few years.

For those spouting the “I won’t stand by and allow our country to be destroyed by the other party” comments (picture any number of small-minded political commentators from both camps), who truly believe some action needs to be taken against those with the audacity to not agree with their politics, please do something about it. And I don’t mean running your mouth on TV or the internet. Take concrete steps. Start a revolution. Call me when you’ve gotten your first confirmed kill. Until then, please tone it down.

Tomorrow evening, whoever wins, let’s take a moment to recognize the miracle of what just took place. Either a leader will be overthrown or a challenger will fail at his attempted coup. And it will happen without a shot being fired, without mobs of rioters breaking through the doors of the White House, without deposed leaders being hung from lamp posts. The mere accomplishment of a peaceful election, no matter how divisive we might think it is, could not happen in many countries. In some countries where it can happen, just a few years ago it couldn’t have.

On Election Day 2000 in Kosovo, I was confronted by a huge mob at a polling site who was convinced the military and police would arbitrarily decide to turn them away before they could vote. A few days before Election Day 2005 in Iraq, my team escorted the military convoy taking election ballots into Najaf. We wound our way past bullet- and RPG-scarred checkpoints, dodged burned out vehicles and passed under shadows of bombed buildings. Because we had the ballots, we expeced to be ambushed all the way in, and all the way out. On Election Day 2009 in Afghanistan, I watched a firefight between the Afghan Army and Taliban outside a polling site. Heavy gunfire crackled and RPG rounds detonated against the walls of a school where votes were supposed to be cast. The Taliban murdered voters on their way to the polling sites because they opposed the very idea of an election, regardless of the result. Needless to say, not many Afghans voted.

These things won’t happen here. We don’t need armies standing by the voting booth to protect our right to vote. It’s a free country, with fair and free (if not perfect) elections. Our elections don’t produce wars between opposing factions. And they shouldn’t produce manufactured rifts between countrymen with what are, in the big picture, extremely slight ideological differences. So let’s celebrate this victory of democracy and freedom together, shoulder to shoulder, conservative or liberal. Because no matter the result, a free election is a tremendous accomplishment we should all be proud of.