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“Which brings me to the last part of my confession. I want Lava to stay alive. No matter how bad things get it's still better to be alive. I want to know he's breathing and leaping after dust balls and chasing imaginary enemies in his sleep. I want him to be alive, because then there's still hope that he'll make it here to California and get to be an American dog who runs on the beach and chases the mailman instead of strangers with guns.”
-- From Baghdad, with Love by Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman
Pop came home from his shopping rounds last week, and said that he came across Mr. Kopelman at the BX, apparently doing a book tour, and he picked up an autographed copy of his book. I hadn't heard of it, and I probably wouldn't have come across this book on my own, and I'm happily surprised to have loved it as much as I did.
As much as I have been interested in the news and the Iraq war, and as much as I may be possessed of a certain testosterone-fueled imagination, I'm not one to seek out a book that gives an inside account of the military action, which I think is a bit intense in a technical sort of way. Now, the beauty of Kopelman's narrative is that, through the sweetener of a dog story, he actually affords one some vital, realist looks of the Iraq war from inside. Fallujah is the center of this man-meets-dog story, when Fallujah was the center of the action of the war. And it's hard to come away from this book without being impressed by these soldiers, to think that this is somehow just another job, and for rather modest pay. Sure, there's a darker side, but let's leave that for another story.
Below is an extended excerpt. The main concern here is that he is hoping to circumvent orders that require all dogs and cats to be killed, which is an elaboration of the standing order that soldiers are not allowed to keep pets. They are cracking down because stray dogs have been eating the corpses lying on the streets, and they want to maintain a better showing of order than this.
___ ___ ___
Am I insane?
I am a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I am an officer in a brotherhood that always goes in first, and that pretty much sums it up right there. We’re brave to the point of insanity, so being a Marine takes a certain kind of mind-set to begin with.
Which means you don’t always follow orders.
The common belief is that you go in a boy and come out a man, like they have this magical ability to change who you are, but the truth of the matter is, we were insane going in and insane coming out, only now we sing this anthem and know cool martial arts.
Insane isn’t the right word exactly. None of us really believes Marines guard the streets of Heaven, but how sane is it to want to go in first? I can sit aside from this and in a cool, calculated, scientific manner look at it for what it is: not insanity, but a primitive gene that requires some of us to be the fittest and the bravest and the best-est there is, and then the pubic relations brass throws in the word proudest so we don’t feel like cavemen on caffeine.
It’s not because we didn’t belong or didn’t like team sports, and it’s not because we couldn’t afford college or were manipulated by recruiters or dumped by some chick and then had to prove a point. Those guys joined the army. We didn’t have rotten childhoods, we didn’t hate math, we didn’t bully skinny kids on the playground and didn’t start fires in the garage.
And it’s not like we joined up without thinking about it, or like once we got in they didn’t give us time to think about it. Believe me, sleep deprivation, food rationing and sit-ups make you think a whole hell of a lot about it. We weren’t coerced. We weren’t brainwashed. Our souls weren’t plundered.
We just can’t help it.
We aren’t cut out for anything else. We were Marines going in and Marines coming out. We don’t want to take orders.
And you want to know something? I don’t care anymore. I used to, when I first joined up. I worried about my parents’ objections, my college buddies’ sneers, being called a “jarhead” for the rest of my adult life. But hell if I could help it. The minute I signed on the dotted line, I had this sort of out-of-body party that hasn’t been matched since.
Oo-rah.
Listening to these guys snore around me, I really like what I am - a Marine. I like being strong. I like being brave. I like going in first. I want to go in first, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone shoot my puppy.
-- Jay Kopelman
-- From Baghdad, with Love by Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman
Pop came home from his shopping rounds last week, and said that he came across Mr. Kopelman at the BX, apparently doing a book tour, and he picked up an autographed copy of his book. I hadn't heard of it, and I probably wouldn't have come across this book on my own, and I'm happily surprised to have loved it as much as I did.
As much as I have been interested in the news and the Iraq war, and as much as I may be possessed of a certain testosterone-fueled imagination, I'm not one to seek out a book that gives an inside account of the military action, which I think is a bit intense in a technical sort of way. Now, the beauty of Kopelman's narrative is that, through the sweetener of a dog story, he actually affords one some vital, realist looks of the Iraq war from inside. Fallujah is the center of this man-meets-dog story, when Fallujah was the center of the action of the war. And it's hard to come away from this book without being impressed by these soldiers, to think that this is somehow just another job, and for rather modest pay. Sure, there's a darker side, but let's leave that for another story.
Below is an extended excerpt. The main concern here is that he is hoping to circumvent orders that require all dogs and cats to be killed, which is an elaboration of the standing order that soldiers are not allowed to keep pets. They are cracking down because stray dogs have been eating the corpses lying on the streets, and they want to maintain a better showing of order than this.
___ ___ ___
Am I insane?
I am a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I am an officer in a brotherhood that always goes in first, and that pretty much sums it up right there. We’re brave to the point of insanity, so being a Marine takes a certain kind of mind-set to begin with.
Which means you don’t always follow orders.
The common belief is that you go in a boy and come out a man, like they have this magical ability to change who you are, but the truth of the matter is, we were insane going in and insane coming out, only now we sing this anthem and know cool martial arts.
Insane isn’t the right word exactly. None of us really believes Marines guard the streets of Heaven, but how sane is it to want to go in first? I can sit aside from this and in a cool, calculated, scientific manner look at it for what it is: not insanity, but a primitive gene that requires some of us to be the fittest and the bravest and the best-est there is, and then the pubic relations brass throws in the word proudest so we don’t feel like cavemen on caffeine.
It’s not because we didn’t belong or didn’t like team sports, and it’s not because we couldn’t afford college or were manipulated by recruiters or dumped by some chick and then had to prove a point. Those guys joined the army. We didn’t have rotten childhoods, we didn’t hate math, we didn’t bully skinny kids on the playground and didn’t start fires in the garage.
And it’s not like we joined up without thinking about it, or like once we got in they didn’t give us time to think about it. Believe me, sleep deprivation, food rationing and sit-ups make you think a whole hell of a lot about it. We weren’t coerced. We weren’t brainwashed. Our souls weren’t plundered.
We just can’t help it.
We aren’t cut out for anything else. We were Marines going in and Marines coming out. We don’t want to take orders.
And you want to know something? I don’t care anymore. I used to, when I first joined up. I worried about my parents’ objections, my college buddies’ sneers, being called a “jarhead” for the rest of my adult life. But hell if I could help it. The minute I signed on the dotted line, I had this sort of out-of-body party that hasn’t been matched since.
Oo-rah.
Listening to these guys snore around me, I really like what I am - a Marine. I like being strong. I like being brave. I like going in first. I want to go in first, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone shoot my puppy.
-- Jay Kopelman
