Wednesday, March 09, 2005

7:08 PM - an introduction

so i guess the best way to start this thing off is to tell you that i'm a soldier in the united states army, and in about six months i'll be deploying to iraq for my second tour of duty. i might have written elsewhere before and i might have not, but i'm staying anonymous on this blog for personal and security reasons, the main reason being that i hate dealing with officers and having a public blog tends to get me thrown into meetings with those very same officers that i hate dealing with. despite the fact that i'll never put out any information that deals with opsec (operational security), i still always tend to get called in to answer questions about posts that have absolutely nothing to do with anything. if you're even a little bit critical of people in charge of you, they get panties all in a wad and demand answers as to why you, a bit player in this gigantic important war game, have the right to talk shit about them when they're obviously more important than you and would never do anything wrong.

i digress.

the point is, i'm staying anonymous because i want to write about the things i want to write about, and i want to talk about the things i want to talk about, and i don't want to have to stand in front of a desk while captain jackoff spouts off and complains just because you might have said something that puts a small stain on his sainthood.

i like my unit. well, i liked my unit when we were in iraq. over there, it was a finely tuned war machine, and we went about the business of killing haji's without mercy and without hesitation. i'm not pro-war and i'm not anti-war, but you can bet your fucking bottom dollar that if you're faced with either killing someone who is bent on killing you or turning the other cheek and believing war is wrong, you'll pull the trigger just as fast as i have. yes, i've killed people and i'll do it again because it's my job and, really, if it's you or them, it's damn sure going to be them. i went to iraq the first time hating the shit out of president bush, and i came home hating president bush but knowing that we did some damn good shit over there. home, though, is a different story. the only point to garrison life is doing a good job so that people above you will look good to the people above THEM and thus get promoted. i don't really enjoy that type of life; i'm the type who would rather do my job and get it over with and not worry about stupid rules and fancy regulations that only exist to make us miserable on a daily basis. and that's the problem with being in garrison; everything only exists to make things LOOK good, while in iraq everything exists to make sure you stay alive. there's something about that adrenaline rush that i'll never get out of my system, which is why i'm looking forward to going back.

so here we go. as we get ready to go, i'll post about training and life stuff that some of you might find interesting. some of you might find it boring, too, but i'm really only doing this for myself. if people come along for the ride, so be it, but i'm not going to tone anything down and i'm not going to change who i am. i already did that once for the fuckers in the office, and i am damn sure not going to do it again.

oh, and if you're an officer (like dagger, who i am a big fan of and hope i don't offend) -- it's not that i hate all officers. i just hate the ones with personal agendas that have absolutely nothing to do with helping soldiers or humanity in general.

stick around.

Janie said...

Definitely gonna stick around.

Thank you for your service.

Anonymous said...

I'll be back.

sml said...

read you back to front. nice writing, easy to read. i live a very different life, but you're welcome to read me too if you want.

7:08 PM - an introduction

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