“What are you gonna do when you get out of the Army?” “Be a [EXPLETIVE] rock star.” “Sometimes I remember: ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right. I went to Iraq.’ Now that I have a kid, sometimes I find myself thinking: Is he going to end up going to some war that ends up not doing any good for the world? And receive a bunch of shitty care after? I think we were in Baghdad for a few days, and then we were in a firefight outside the Abu Hanifa mosque, and it was just totally bizarre, just, you know, [EXPLETIVE] gunfire everywhere. A couple of R.P.G.s and I was just thinking: What the [EXPLETIVE] am I doing here? And that question never went away. I don’t know how to explain the war to myself and have yet to have any clear thought of, like, yes, we actually made a difference there because we didn’t at all. There was no difference [EXPLETIVE] made. Maybe for the worse.” “The area I come from is very small. Not a lot of opportunities for people fresh out of high school. So it was either community college or go do something to travel the world, get paid for it. Experience places like this. I had swore I’d never joined the Army. I watched my brother come home all rigid when I was like 12, and I was like, no way. And then he called me and he said, “You watching this [EXPLETIVE]?” And I said, “What?” And he goes, “Turn on the television.” And about 30 seconds after I turned on the television, the second plane hit. When that happened, one, I was mad, you know, This is my [EXPLETIVE] backyard. But I immediately thought, you know, this is what I need to do. I need, I need to defend my –– I just felt it. I just had to do it. I had to go join my brother. I had to be by his side. There was no way I was going to let my brother go into a war and me not be there.” “We’ll keep one saw back here. Just know where your people are. and you got the rear. So you need to start holding that like you [EXPLETIVE] mean it. That deployment was funny because there was no clear-cut mission. The whole time you’re wondering, like, what are we really doing? Are we really in combat? Are we not in combat? Who’s actually the enemy? Now you’re in Baghdad, now you’re in the heart of Adhamiya. Now you’re, now what?
