5 years ... and getting tired

In 2005, The Ex (to whom I was then still married) told me that he had received orders to deploy to Iraq for 6 months, right in the midst of our divorce, when we were starting to heal the wounds with which our marriage had left us and become friends again. This would be his second trip to "the sandbox," and, truth be told, it scared the hell out of me. I started crying on the phone and threatened to stalk his commander in my lacy undies, if only to convince him to send The Ex somewhere else, or to let him stay at home. I also threatened to pray for a reassignment. I did. A week later, The Ex's orders were changed. Instead of Iraq, he was deployed to Afghanistan, to work the passenger terminal and distribute supplies in the "area." And to ship the coffins home. Coffins filled with people whom, only a few weeks before, he had seen coming off the plane.

And he returned home to his family, alive, with all limbs intact, and his brain not much the worse for the wear (if you don't count the still frequent panic attacks). Almost 4,000 others weren't lucky enough to come back alive, not to speak of the thousands who ended up at Walter Reid or some other military hospital with half of their face blown away, their spinal chord severed, or their mind shattered. Not to speak of the families, where "married single mothers" (or fathers) gave care to children who will never know their father (or mother) the way s/he intended them to. Not to speak of the parents whose sons or daughters died, either fully or partly. And, of course, not to speak about a nation where hundreds of thousands of people died because the American invasion unleashed a cultural hell nobody can seem to contain.

Not to speak of them. Because Mr. Bush, his mind another casualty of this war born from its own idiocy, sure doesn't like to. So, what more is there to say to five years of self-destructive imperialist madness, perpetuated by those among us willing to trade a few lives for a few taxcuts in 2000 and 2004, that hasn't already been said?

Both, our economy and I, we're getting tired of this.