Ltdan's blog post - the soldier.........(my opinion)

first, the one thing that i want to impress to all is that i am proud to call the interpreters i met friends! this too is a source of friction with my wife because she wants nothing from iraq in my life. i keep in e-mail contact with them and have met one since returning (two now live in the US, one having married a nurse from the unit which replaced us!) as i stated before, i have writted letters and championed the cause of another who is trying to obtain his visa.
i feel i short-sheeted the iraqi people in my previous post and the reason is this; the lives of the iraqi people and the soldier are so closely inter-twined. i saw too often the results of those interactions, often with catastrophic results. many times we saw iraqi people who had been shot by our convoys as they travel the roads of iraq. it is easy for people (and at times i admit i am one) to critcize the gunners of said convoys because they had shot civilians. then i have to put myself in ther position. they have been given a HUGE responsibilty and in many cases an impossible task. i often thanked God that i was not the one who had to make the split second decision as to whether the vehicle approaching was a VBIED (vehicle-born improvised explosive device) or an iraq civilian who just happened to get too close. there are "rules of engagement", but these rules are processed at incredible speeds. we put weapons of destruction in a teenagers hands and give him (or her......yes, as a medical unit we actually had female soldiers as gunners) the task of protecting not only themselves, but we entrust them with the lives of their friends. i saw children who had been killed and injured severely because of those decisions. i am sure your initial reaction is one of horror (who's isn't?) and immediately want to place the blame on those that pulled the trigger, but i was able to look in the eyes and see the faces of those who did the pulling. the shock, pain, and sorrow in their eyes stopped my in my tracks. it is also important to note that the terrorists think nothing of using women and children to deliver a VBIED! i could not imagine having to live the rest of my life knowing that i had caused such suffering. in one instance after a little girl of 7 years had been killed i sat stunned as the father came to me with tears in his eyes and asked about compensation.....what the fuck i said to myself with a lot of internal anger!!!! yes, the US government will compensate the locals for any "damage" that we do while there. whether be damaging a house, using their property, or killing their family. how much is a humann life worth over there? i was really afraid to ask. after i was able to process such a disgusting question, i was able to realize that he WAS in pain, but the simple fact remained that he still had a family to care for. yes, they will try anything to provide for their families. we have seen many cases of the same thing here in our court system, so i quickly dismounted from my high and mighty stance.
my initial hesitancy in seeking treatment is rooted in all that i have written above. how could i possibly ask for help when i was not subjected to the life and death decisions and horrors that the troops "in the field" had seen? my decisions held only one life in the balance and i had a team to help me with those decisions. i did not have to protect my brothers and sisters and wonder if the next car might severly change my life. but in fact i had seen all of that, but only through the eyes of others. i saw the father and mother and brother and sister of those killed and i have seen the anguish of those who had inflicted the pain. plus i had worked on their loved one who took the last breath in my presencethe last thing i want to impress, is that i have also seen the results of those who hesitated that split second and who had experienced first-hand the cost of that delay. if you sat and thought of what an explosion might do to a human body, please double it and perhaps triple it. being from a trauma hospital, i am used to motor vehicle accidents, falls, small caliber gunshots, etc. i was not even prepared for the devastation caused by an IED. it is something that i will never be able to get out of my mind. it is also something that i hope less and less people will have to see in the future. i am tired, thank you......