Army Life Part 0
This is important to me. It's probably not important to you at all, and I encourage you to skip this if that's the case. But it's an explanation. Of a recent change of perspective I've had.
We saw Black Hawk Down in class a few fridays ago. Apparantly, everyone on earth has seen this movie. I hadn't before. It's dorky to say that a movie as well-known and goddamn obvious as this one could somehow define things for me, or help me express something that, honestly, is really cliche, but there you are.
Black Hawk Down, if you're a freak like me who didn't know, is a movie about the Somalian conflict. In the mid-90s, we went into Somalia due to serious human rights violations occuring there, massive sect violence, ethnic cleansing, etcetera. This was the only reason. No national interest, no real game plan or objective. We shouldn't have been there.
But the movie isn't about that. It's about the soldiers themselves; elite troops who go on a mission that starts out simple, but risky, and then everything goes wrong. There's an ambush, and a rocket strikes a Black Hawk helicopter, bringing it down. More men are sent in to try and reach this downed helicopter to save any survivors, and things get worse and worse from there. It's a massacre. It is terrible. It is hellish and ugly. There is no political reason for any of it. It is a tragic, empty waste of human life. Some of the soldiers know this. By the end, it is irrelevant. For them. The ones fighting. It doesn't matter why. It's not the Army's job to care why. The army exists to do two things: kill the enemy, and protect the lives of everyone else on your side trying to kill the enemy.
The Army is a big, fat gun. That's all. This is not the perspective change, this is the source of my dispair for the last two years. I wanted to change something, to fight for something...turns out it's not a very well thought-out cause. Turns out I don't like what we're trying to do. Turns out, none of these things matter because it's not my job to like what we do. No one cares how the gun feels about things.
And it's not a revelation that it's supposed to be about the men and women fighting next to you or whatever. They've been shouting that since basic. It really bothered me. That this was all. Just to save the people next to you, who are trying to save you. Circular and sad.
But it's not.
Look, I'd rather not be here. I think it's moral to not fight this war, because we won't win, because the people that are dying aren't dying for anything. But it's not a bad thing, once one is good and trapped, to fight for the people fighting with you. To save them from that.
I look around, at the people I'm with, and I realize I don't hate them. Not even close. With 99% of people, it's impossible to truly hate them if you know them well enough, and we know each other well enough. And when I go to my new unit, I'll know those people well enough too. And they are not what I've been saying, not even close; they are not idiots, they are not worthless. They are good people. In a way completely different from you and me, they are good people. They have their hopes and dreams, even if they are humble, they work hard and earn their salaries, they are all trying to make themselves better people in some way, whether it's brutishly simple (like the guy who spends all his time at the gym) or more complex (a chance to escape a small Texas town, their drug-addicted parents, get an education, a chance to be more than they would have been if they'd rotted where they were). It is not so different from what we are trying to do. Only in magnitude, in potential, is it different.
And would these people be my friends, outside of this place? No. But in this place, they are my family. Sometimes you don't like your family, sometimes you hate them and wish you didn't share a last name or a uniform, but at the end of the day you do and it's a bond, between you. They are like my family, except that they will never demand that I take my trenchcoat off for family pictures or smile big for the camera. We are all of us fucked up in our own way and they might make fun of you for it, might prod you about it and disaprove of it, but at the end of the day they'd still risk their lives to save you, and you would for them. Family.
And like any family, someday I'll turn 18 and leave this house, I'll go out into the world and become whoever I want to be. But even then, they will still be my family. Crazy aunts and uncles. Even if I never speak to them again, it's still a part of me, and that's not something I regret because we may be dysfunctional, incestuous, sometimes downright evil, but we're a strong family and a good family and I'm proud to be part of it. There. I said it. Even if we're not alike.
And until that day, when I leave these sons of bitches, I'll do everything I can for them. The men and women fighting next to me. My people.
And I'll be proud of that. Rather than ashamed and full of dispair.
We saw Black Hawk Down in class a few fridays ago. Apparantly, everyone on earth has seen this movie. I hadn't before. It's dorky to say that a movie as well-known and goddamn obvious as this one could somehow define things for me, or help me express something that, honestly, is really cliche, but there you are.
Black Hawk Down, if you're a freak like me who didn't know, is a movie about the Somalian conflict. In the mid-90s, we went into Somalia due to serious human rights violations occuring there, massive sect violence, ethnic cleansing, etcetera. This was the only reason. No national interest, no real game plan or objective. We shouldn't have been there.
But the movie isn't about that. It's about the soldiers themselves; elite troops who go on a mission that starts out simple, but risky, and then everything goes wrong. There's an ambush, and a rocket strikes a Black Hawk helicopter, bringing it down. More men are sent in to try and reach this downed helicopter to save any survivors, and things get worse and worse from there. It's a massacre. It is terrible. It is hellish and ugly. There is no political reason for any of it. It is a tragic, empty waste of human life. Some of the soldiers know this. By the end, it is irrelevant. For them. The ones fighting. It doesn't matter why. It's not the Army's job to care why. The army exists to do two things: kill the enemy, and protect the lives of everyone else on your side trying to kill the enemy.
The Army is a big, fat gun. That's all. This is not the perspective change, this is the source of my dispair for the last two years. I wanted to change something, to fight for something...turns out it's not a very well thought-out cause. Turns out I don't like what we're trying to do. Turns out, none of these things matter because it's not my job to like what we do. No one cares how the gun feels about things.
And it's not a revelation that it's supposed to be about the men and women fighting next to you or whatever. They've been shouting that since basic. It really bothered me. That this was all. Just to save the people next to you, who are trying to save you. Circular and sad.
But it's not.
Look, I'd rather not be here. I think it's moral to not fight this war, because we won't win, because the people that are dying aren't dying for anything. But it's not a bad thing, once one is good and trapped, to fight for the people fighting with you. To save them from that.
I look around, at the people I'm with, and I realize I don't hate them. Not even close. With 99% of people, it's impossible to truly hate them if you know them well enough, and we know each other well enough. And when I go to my new unit, I'll know those people well enough too. And they are not what I've been saying, not even close; they are not idiots, they are not worthless. They are good people. In a way completely different from you and me, they are good people. They have their hopes and dreams, even if they are humble, they work hard and earn their salaries, they are all trying to make themselves better people in some way, whether it's brutishly simple (like the guy who spends all his time at the gym) or more complex (a chance to escape a small Texas town, their drug-addicted parents, get an education, a chance to be more than they would have been if they'd rotted where they were). It is not so different from what we are trying to do. Only in magnitude, in potential, is it different.
And would these people be my friends, outside of this place? No. But in this place, they are my family. Sometimes you don't like your family, sometimes you hate them and wish you didn't share a last name or a uniform, but at the end of the day you do and it's a bond, between you. They are like my family, except that they will never demand that I take my trenchcoat off for family pictures or smile big for the camera. We are all of us fucked up in our own way and they might make fun of you for it, might prod you about it and disaprove of it, but at the end of the day they'd still risk their lives to save you, and you would for them. Family.
And like any family, someday I'll turn 18 and leave this house, I'll go out into the world and become whoever I want to be. But even then, they will still be my family. Crazy aunts and uncles. Even if I never speak to them again, it's still a part of me, and that's not something I regret because we may be dysfunctional, incestuous, sometimes downright evil, but we're a strong family and a good family and I'm proud to be part of it. There. I said it. Even if we're not alike.
And until that day, when I leave these sons of bitches, I'll do everything I can for them. The men and women fighting next to me. My people.
And I'll be proud of that. Rather than ashamed and full of dispair.