Cross posted at VetVoice.com
In March of 2007, my platoon moved from Baghdad to a city farther south called Diwaniyah. Diwaniyah had very little in the way of Coalition Forces. There was a small and relatively inactive Polish unit there, as well as an American SF team. But Diwaniyah is a pretty big town, and those forces just weren’t cutting the mustard. And so, shortly after my intel platoon arrived, a Battalion was sent down for a couple of weeks to try and weed out some of the insurgents.
I worked as an Intelligence Analyst, and the bulk of my job consisted at predicting what sorts of movement different targets would make at different times. On the first or second day of Operation Black Eagle, as it was called, the commander of the company set to go out that night had decided to go after a specific individual, and I was the one who had to tell him what time was best for him to act. I told him a certain time, I don’t remember what time now, and he called me back about a half hour before his unit was set to leave to double check that nothing had changed. I guess I was a little hesitant in my answer. He told me that my next statement would determine if his unit would go out or not.
Now, I had known that something like that was true in the past. The war in Iraq is certainly intelligence driven, any insurgency must be. But I had never had a combat leader say it to me directly about a specific mission. At that moment I realized, in a way I hadn’t before, that my actions were having a direct impact on the lives of others. And I’m not just talking about impacting how they would live their lives, but whether or not their lives would continue at all. If I said go, the mission would go on as planned, if I said I wasn’t sure of his location, it would mean that everyone would stay home. If the intel was right and they went, there was a good chance that at least one Iraqi would be dead at the end of the night. If the intel was wrong, there was a good chance that an American or two would be dead. Either way, there was an excellent chance of civilian deaths.
Everything in side of me wanted to say not to go. All of my love for life wanted to stop anything that could end a life so quickly. All of my political beliefs are opposed to this war. Everything I believed told me to do everything in my power to keep the unit on pose. The only things opposing those beliefs was the fact that the target was a legitimately bad character, and that I’m pretty good at my job, so there was no reason to doubt the intelligence that I had produced. I said that we were green; I said that he should go on with the mission as planned. He did just that.
I never found out how that mission went. I probably could have if I’d wanted too, but there were an awful lot of things going on and I honestly didn’t want to know. That was the first and only time that I saw my input being used so closely, but the memory stayed with me for the rest of the deployment. With every piece of intelligence I passed up to someone else, I remembered two things. The first was that it was entirely possible that the assessment or PowerPoint presentation I had just written could, indirectly, end a life. And the second thing was that I would probably never really be sure one-way or the other.
And that is sort of how I feel about politics. Every conversation I have, every letter I write (or don’t write), every blog I post, every vote I cast, has the potential to seriously alter the course of events, even if those events only affect one person. And I will never know for sure what effects I have. Occasionally, like in the 2000 Florida elections, it is obvious how important one person’s actions can be, but it’s not usually that clear.
The vast majority of those decisions don’t leave me very torn. If this diary that I’m writing sucks, people won’t read it and it will pass into the ether. No biggie. The same is true for most other things. But there aren’t a lot of things more serious then an election. The primaries are coming up, and, at least for me, it’s been hard to settle on a candidate. And so, as the primaries approach, I become torn.
I know that it’s been said during almost every election cycle since the Constitution was ratified, but 2008 is truly one of the most, if not the most, important election in recent memory. Unlike in 2004, there is no incumbent, so the field is open. This election will be determined without one candidate having all of the advantages that elected office gives. And so, this election we will choose our nation’s path. Will the nation move further down the line that Bush has drawn, or we move back towards the civil liberties of our ancestors?
There is no way for me to know the answer to that question as I prepare for the primary season, but I do know the answer I want, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same as your answer as well. And unlike my choice early in my tour of Iraq, I won’t be able to escape the answer because the life being affected will be mine.