I just chatted with my brother on the internet. He is in Iraq and today is his 29th birthday. We talked about what being 29 is like (only one year form the big 3-0) and what present he got from his fellow enlisted friends (a cooling pad to keep his computer from overheating in the 125 degree days.) We talked about how much he misses his kids and wife, and how there are so many job openings for him in Kentucky, but how he is not there to claim them. We talked about the post he is on and he told me how he watches the Iraqi children playing around the walls of the base. He says they have nothing.
We talked about the 115 days until his return and what we are going to do when he gets back, mainly drink lots of beer and hang out with our kids.
His story is the same as so many others over there. This war needs to end so we can get our brothers, husbands, sister, wives and kids back, and so the Iraqi people can try to get their lives back on track.
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4 comments:
Glad you got to talk to your brother on his birthday, sweetie. I know it had to be good for him too.
Also, I haven't looked at your Flickr pics in a while; those shots of Piper and Bronwen in your back yard are just precious!
Whether US troops are in Iraq or not, most Iraqi children will continue to have nothing. Iraq has no experience of good governance and even less experience of economic and educational opportunity.
The USA and Great Britain are there (with a few other small forces) because the United Nations continues to fail in the fulfillment of it charter to deal with "failed states."
I pray daily for Josh and his fellow soldiers. I must remember to pray for those children too.
I'm not sure exactly what constitutes "good" governance, but for what it's worth, we often forget that the Iraqi constitution adopted under British rule in the 1920s "provided for a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary government, and a bicameral legislature. The latter was composed of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate. The lower house was to be elected every four years in a free manhood suffrage. The first Parliament met in 1925. Ten general elections were held before the downfall of the monarchy in 1958." (Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-214199/Iraq)
If anyone is interested in listening to assorted academic experts talk about Iraq (and many, many other things), I run a website at the University of Chicago called CHIASMOS, where we archive over a hundred audio and video recordings of such talks (http://chiasmos.uchicago.edu/).
There's also an interesting talk by Daniel Barnard, an Army officer and instructor at West Point on the history of the Iraqi insurgency against the British in the early 20th century here: http://jtac.uchicago.edu/conferences/06/audio/barnard.mp3
Anyway, just thought I'd share...
Sorry, live link added here.
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