Mosul

They don't have sand here, they have dust. It sticks to your boots and to your clothes and to the outside of your car and the inside of your mouth. It gets in your eye and it gets in your water and it gets under your fingernails. Kuwait's buildings were the color of sand because the people building them, I presume, used up all their creativity on the shapes. Iraq's buildings, so far, are the color of dust because the buildings are covered in dust, dust that seems to be consuming them slowly, or at least dissolving them into the rubble that is the only thing I seem to be able to look at here.

So, what can I say about my first day in Iraq? I'm covered in dust and completely exhausted. In a way, I'm glad they started us out in Kuwait. I got to stay in a hotel instead of a hut, got to shower instead of...not shower, got to meet logistics specialists and mechanics and trombone players and travel agents instead of what seem to be an endless array of 17-year-olds carrying guns the size of my leg.

But, in another way, a way that I'm really feeling right now, I feel a little stunned. It's so much harder here. There isn't the buoyant spirit and gung-ho attitude I saw everywhere in Kuwait. Oh, to be sure, the troops here are INTO the mission, and I don't doubt for a second their resolve or their commitment. But I get the quick sense that they're fighting for survival, not for some more optimistic cause.

Let me tell you what makes me think that. We went to a memorial service this afternoon. The -- I didn't know what to call him...casualty?...victim?...subject? -- deceased was a Sar'n, and a great one, it sounded like. Maybe it's what they say about everyone who dies here (I can't imagine a service at which Pfc. So-and-So is described as "a miserable little bastard who hated being here and was a constant drag on morale"), but the men from his unit who spoke painted a portrait of a cheerful, funny, brave, even cocksure American soldier, like you see in the movies. They didn't say how he died, but it sounded like he was with his unit at the time. He had -- has? -- three daughters, one of whom was born right around the time he deployed a couple years back. The middle one couldn't sleep without him there to tuck her in and needed her mom -- his wife -- to bring her his Dale Earnhardt blanket. I don't know why I'm telling you this. But I sat there listening to this, and listening to the roll call he failed to answer and listening to the volleys and listening to Taps and wishing I had known we were going to a memorial service so I could have found something more appropriate to wear. I wondered if the cheerleaders, in uniform as always, were thinking the same thing.

But, mostly, I felt fucking helpless. Helpless and angry. We'd been at the PX (that's the gift shop, basically) at Arifjan yesterday, and everyone had been picking through the merchandise, looking for military-themed t-shirts and jackets and knives and whatnot. You know how much I hate shopping, but even I was about to pick up some stuff until I saw how long the checkout line was. But sitting in this service, I kept thinking, Jesus...this isn't a fucking game. And so many people treat it like it was a game. Including, first and fucking foremost, the people who sent this man to Mosul to die.

I'm slowly starting to think more slowly. And maybe all that was just my reaction upon being suddenly confronted with the worst part of this whole experience. Maybe people die in wars and that doesn't make those deaths, or those wars, pointless and futile. Maybe it gives it all meaning. Certainly, the sacrifice of the man whose service I sat in on today wasn't meaningless. I don't know, and I don't expect to figure it out.

Gotta run. More later. If I can get on-line somewhere.