Peace on Earth

Even in Hawaii, war is a bad place.

I spent Gulf War One in a barracks in Hawaii. On a daily basis, I'd get up from bed around 4pm, shower, get dressed, grab a bite to eat, and head to my intelligence building to work. We worked from roughly 6pm to 6am every day. My job was the analysis of satellite imagery from the Gulf region. It had been my job for nearly two years at that point, but until GW1, nobody had ever paid any attention to it. All of a sudden, with the start of hostilities, I was briefing Admirals and watching my analysis show up on CNN. Interesting stuff.

We were not directly a target. Fleet Headquarters shared the same complex as us. We were the eyes, ears, and brains of the entire Pacific Fleet. When hostilities started, our threat level assessment went to the highest you can get without patrolling dogs, machine gun posts, etc... While most of the country was unaware of the dangers we faced in the United States from terrorism, we were very aware of our surroundings and suspicious activities in our area. Fear, while not great, was a presence.

Our work load increased as the ground war got closer. We were now engaged in real hostilities in a part of the world. We stopped looking for the sake of looking and started looking for real danger. Missing something that was right there in front of us was not an option. Threats had to be found and eliminated. Failure meant death for our friends and fellow soldiers. Compared to that, what is real life? Stress levels soared. Fatigue soared. More than one sailor in our building lost it and found themselves hospitalized from nervous breakdowns.

Drinking was rampant. Destressing became a priority. I was not immune from this behavior. After nearly punching a Lieutenant out, I went home and smashed my fist into a wall several times. The pain calmed me down a great deal. I nearly broke my leg kicking a chair during a Nintendo session. I steered clear of any additional stress. Christmas came and went. It was not my happiest holiday that year. As the war dragged on, there was a real possibility that I would be forced to stay in the military longer than I had anticipated and possibly miss the fall semester of college the next year.

When the day of the greatest battle arrived and I sat listening to a blow by blow account of helicopters massacring tanks and trucks and troops with hellfire missiles, I cheered their destruction. Iraqi soldiers, teenagers not much younger or older than me, were being torn to shreds - their lives being snuffed out - as I cheered on their end. It was not my brightest moment, but it was a great reliever of stress.

War is hell. When you tell young people to kill each other for nebulous reasons, how can it not be? It is a situation that we should always avoid at all costs and should never be entered into lightly. But beyond the emotional, mental, and spiritual anguish it causes, war also takes other tolls.

I returned home from GW1 a changed person. Its hard not to be pushed to the brink and not be changed. Within six months, my fiancee and I had broken up. Part of it was just normal young love coming to an end, but part of it was what the Gulf War had done to me. And I hadn't even come close to the combat zones.

I am reminded of all this because a young man I know through an acquaintance returned home from a tour of Baghdad. For six months he was deployed inside Baghdad, learning to kill or be killed. It was a hard tour for him. He was required to machine gun a man who had done nothing more than hold a cell phone - because that is a tactic used by Al Qaeda. Killing this cell phone man saved him and his comrades. As punishment, Al Qaeda killed the man's family because of his failure to detonate the road side bomb. Five innocent people were killed in one afternoon. It is quite a burden to place on one person's soul - the death of five people, the stress of nearly being killed, the knowledge that you have taken someone else from this world. This young man returned home a couple of weeks ago and found out that his wife wanted a divorce.

People who have never fought in a war or been in the military during a war can never know that everyone in uniform makes sacrifices - that we all suffer, and that you, the citizens who authorize the war, suffer as well. We put ourselves in this situation again and again - and like crazy people we expect a different outcome each time. But war is never succesful. Never. It is always a failure. Every time, no matter the outcome. It is a failure of vision, of faith, and of love.

What I most want for Christmas this year is Peace on Earth. Or, at the very least, less war.