20100103-1624 🔈

AI generated transcript:

It is Sunday, January 3rd, about 4:24 PM I'm in Newport Beach on not too far past… I wonder if the lifeguard is gonna tell me to get off. Alright, I'm gonna pause this, see if he says… Well, that's good. You didn't tell me this stuff and I learned I can record and pause for these little voice memos. That's kinda cool and I can turn the screen off.

So I leave in one week to go to Iraq for just a little tiny bit of time, just a week. It's not a whole lot, but I'm pretty convinced that it's gonna be pretty impactful. There's talk of visiting Iraqi refugees in Amman beforehand, and I did a little bit of research on that and it's a pretty dismal existence and all the other people that I'm going with, I indicated this in email to friends and family, the people I'm going with are mostly CPTers and I'm the only person that will be going that has a background in the military. And, you know, I really don't know how to take that, like internally, externally you know, personally, I've always struggled with this issue of complicity and responsibility with the war in Iraq and, you know, some of the individual things that I failed to do, like when [name redacted] punched the guy with handcuffs behind his back, and how long it took me to realize how difficult it probably was for Qase to be an interpreter and how difficult probably is for any Iraqi to be an interpreter for the Americans, especially in the later deployment that I had and then any time afterward.

So yeah, I'm a week away from that. And there have been some times when I've reflected on it and been really kind of distraught. There's a couple times where I was kind of brought to tears, like just thinking about crossing the border in February of 2004 when [my unit] did. Or… it looks like we might be sleeping at the hospital in Rutba and the parallels with sleeping in the hospital in Samara, and having to help with the body bags and taking pictures and overflowing morgue and the blood on the floor.

And then, also of course, all of this stuff that I've learned about white privilege and hegemony, I think that's how I pronounce it. That just kind of adds another entire layer to the… So I really have no idea how to, or how I will react, I guess. So I've been trying to take time like today and just kind of slow down, reflect, think ahead. I've been journaling. I've been writing; I'm doing handwritten journals for about a week now. Well, ever since I left Hawaii, I think. I'm also doing video journals. And this is the first audio journal I've made. But I'm sure it won't be the last. I'm gonna be probably doing this throughout my time in Iraq too, so...

One thing I learned about my time there, the first time, I didn't journal so much as I did just rant about the political crap going on, and not even like the national political stuff like that, military-political stuff, like not getting a promotion, or not the promotion thing, but the holding the draft fiasco and you know, dealing with [name redacted] and having night shift and all that.

But I didn't actually journal about a whole lot, at least about my feelings and the emotions that kind of went on. So I've been going over old video stuff that I have, and pictures, to just kind of jog my memory and kind of center myself before we all go back. And then on the road down here I was listening to, Speaking of Faith and Krista Tippett had someone on from the Candler School of Theology at Emory. And the woman she had on was a professor emeritus of church history, I think. And she was talking about prayer. I don't know what the broader show was about, but she was talking about prayer. She compared prayer to this anecdote she gave about a piccolo player in a large symphony piccolo; you know, tiny little instrument in a big old symphony. How's that supposed to feel, I guess, to piccolo players? And her anecdote went basically like this; the piccolo player was asked, and he responds with “Long strings of boredom dotted with brief intense periods of terror.”

And it was really funny because I immediately thought that's how combat is described as well. We said it to other people about combat. And it's kind of funny, I mean, when I think about it, the majority of our time was spent dicking around on FOBs playing Halo. I remember making sure that the Xbox was packed, that we could play Halo with Doc [redacted]. And all the other guys, we even had, I think we, yeah, we brought C3K Bowl or whatever the heck that stuff is. So that we could play in between our connexes, you know, everything was all done up.

That's really technically the majority of what we did was waste time on the FOB. I didn't read nearly as much as I should have. I mean, I was playing Tiger Woods and Halo and all that crap. So maybe that's part of the reason I didn't journal, cuz these brief, intense moments of terror were so few and far between. And the last thing I wanted to do was to think them over again. Like when we were in Mosul, I mean Mosul was pretty intense. So. I remember a lot of it, but it, I don't, you know, my emotions around them are, are flavored with my reflections on everything I've learned in the last several years. So they're not reliable as sources of, you know, critical historical reflection on my part, I guess.

And yeah, the graduate application is still going slowly. I'm still kind of, you know, I'm in the midst of thinking about all this stuff as well. So many of them are very much colored by emotions around returning to Iraq. And you know, my hopes for what that will mean in the long term in the future.

Jamie has talked about stuff with like The Washington Post and The New York Times and HBO and all this crap. Then he also mentioned things about the ambassadors to the UN and to the US and how they expect this will have some significant impact on relationships between Iraq and America.

So I, I really don't know what everything means. I think it's very interesting that this Truth Commission on Conscience in War, that I'm looking forward to very much, is also right around the same period. And if everything works out, in the fall I'll start graduate school, hopefully at Kroc institute where I would be hopefully affecting policy and political change and stuff like that.

So I'd like to think there's some parallels, there's some kind of connection between everything that's going on right now and the timing. I mean, it's occurring in my winter break when I don't have school. Like how freaking providential is that?

So I don't know what to think. There's a lot of emotions going on, but I mean, none of them really make sense to me yet. I haven't been really writing. I've been filling my time with all kinds of shit. Graduate school applications. Centurions Guild or St. Damien House or any number of things. So I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know how reliable some of the emotions are because I suspect that in some way I am kind of bottling things up. Because I don't really have anybody that can really reliably turn to. I mean, Zach and Kyle definitely, but you know, we're not in the same location, so everything is done by phone and email and that's a very particular kind of interaction.

But I don't have anybody that can look in the face and say, Shit, man, this is what I fucking think. I mean, I could do that with mom, but it's not the same connection with a peer. That's what I'm hoping for in my next major location, when I get to grad school, is I want people that give a fuck about theology and violence.

You know, if there's another vet there, I think there would be all the more appealing. But I don't know. I think I really am gonna be one of the few people there with my background and that, you know, is as much as people think that's cool, like, oh, you're one of a kind or something. That can be incredibly lonely.

I mean, why the fuck do you think I'm sitting on a lifeguard tower of Newport Beach talking to myself into a microphone that probably no one but myself will listen to later. That's not an indication of my solitude. I don't know what the fuck is.

So yeah, I have a lot of things I'm looking forward to in this trip in kind of a weird way. Like, I'm fully aware it's gonna probably be really painful. There's, you know, an inherent amount of risk as well, but I really think I'll benefit from this trip. What makes it kind of weird is I think Shane [Claiborne] is a little... I think he feels a little bit awkward about my presence.

And then the fact that I was, am, the main contributor behind getting Jamie [Moffett] to Iraq. I don't know how everything will play out. I think I'm kind of harsh on myself anyway, though. I'm probably being much more nervous than I probably should be, but that's okay.

And I'm running up on 12 minutes. I'm gonna cut myself off here, but I'm sure this will go to substitute all the other journals and stuff. Yeah. One week to go. We'll see how