Burnout in the trenches...

[Wes Tausend]

...

Last week the railroad, that I work for, nailed me for about 100 hours ...and at times like that I sometimes feel sorry for myself. Until I read something like this...

"After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence, members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don't worry much about those.

"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.

They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.

A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.

Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy -- the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.........."

Rest of the story:
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...602402_pf.html )

A bit depressing to say the least. Sometimes it's just nicer to read something from Fox News, where they provide a more upbeat perspective.


...

[turnpike boy]

We all have sh*tty days, and they're no different.

What IS different, is the Washington Post's unmitigated drive to provide the bleakest, most depressed editorial style this side of Al-Jazeera. Who knows, maybe they are students of one another.

And, after 14 or 15 months those guys are entitled to a break. A long one. Being in the action is fine for a while, but sooner or later there has to be a real opportunity to stop looking and just close your eyes. They ain't getting it, not there.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is natural - we all do it. Just need to remember, quick-like, is that this too shall pass.

[imagine2frolic]

I had a soldier in my shop last month. He was headed back to Iraq, and this is what he told me. We are tired of taking bullets, and watching Haliburton, and everyone else walk away with lots of money.

He was disenchanted with the idea of being over there, and fighting for a country that is fighting it's ownself.

[Excaliber]

This to shall pass... it won't be that way for the families who lost relatives. A lady friend of mine lost her husband in Vietnam, heli pilot. He remains missing, her anguish continues to this day.

[turnpike boy]

Originally Posted by Excaliber

This to shall pass... it won't be that way for the families who lost relatives. A lady friend of mine lost her husband in Vietnam, heli pilot. He remains missing, her anguish continues to this day.

Yep. And life goes on. It's a choice you have to make - do I stay depressed with all that I saw and did, or do I defer it to some other time and learn life really IS for the living?

The single biggest disservice anyone can do for a loved one is send them off without a clear understanding that the government DOESN'T give a rats a$$ for you, in or out of the service. Never has, never will; recall Hoover City? Only about 80 years ago now. This list - and attitude - is endless, and will forever be.

Profiteering was practiced by the Romans, too. That customer doubtless heard that war is good business; now he's seen the truth in that statement. Most of us go in with visions of near-holy intents, and get brought back to earth pretty quickly. Morale-killer? - you bet. But it does serve to make you want to stay alive a whole lot more.