Manifesto
I cannot tell you who I am, at least not my name… but you will come to know who I am by what I do. I’m a woman in my thirties, and I’m an Arabic linguist in the military. I live on a heavily guarded Coalition Air Base in a small Persian Gulf principality you’ve probably never heard of. I’m the enlisted leader of a small band of twenty or so enlisted folks just like me. Nearly every day, I pull on a flight suit and climb into a plane that’s older than I am, and spend over 9 hours in the skies over Iraq. At the end of every day I come back to my ten-foot-square room inside the concertina-wire enclave that is my home for the next year. No part of my life – my job, my friends, my recreation – is not in some way controlled by the US Military. Don’t get me wrong – I may not be rear echelon, but I’m far from the front line. I can eat 24 hours a day, I sleep in a warm bed, and I have plenty of choices for recreation… I live just the life the Government wants me to lead. Free of TV commercials, with a rationed three beers a day and highly censored internet, I live the perfect pre-packaged life, complete with all the Mom, Apple Pie, and soft-core porn you could want. Welcome to what I’ll hereafter call Pianosa Air Base.
I’d tell you how I got here, but I really don’t know. Not so many years ago I was at the edge of ending my hitch in the military when two airliners fell out of the sky in New York. Caught up in the moment, I raised my right hand and decided to stay. In those first few heady days, we painted “Let’s Roll!” onto the noses of our planes, and charged off to kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan. Things were clean, and it made sense. Almost five years later, I’m not sure in the fighting of the “war” we haven’t somehow become something I never would never have raised my right hand to defend in the first place. Now the glamour is stripped away, and I’m just working to make it to my retirement, and a chance at starting another life.
I send these bulletins to a friend of mine who got out, because the Pianosa Air Base Censors block all blogs. She guards my identity and my privacy – she’s my Judith Miller, and I’m the unnamed source! She’ll forward any comments anyone posts, so have at. So here I am. I have a solid unbroken year left to go, stretching ahead of me, dull and drab as the monochromatic landscape. I’m bored. I’m lonely. I need a creative outlet. I want to talk about what I think, and I’m wondering if anyone’s listening. Welcome to my blog. — Yossarian
Seaspook said,
April 2, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Yossarian,
I saw your link on my site meter and paid a visit. Thanks for what you are doing and the sacrifice you are making.
Seaspook said,
April 3, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Yossarian,
For a good belly laugh, go here: http://peacemoonbeam.typepad.com/the_peace_moonbeam_chroni/
Citizen Deux said,
April 16, 2006 at 2:02 am
It all fades to gray in the end. We long for short and sweet solutions to complicated problems. It took our nation a civil war to finalize what the founding fathers started. It will take us at least as long to help set the world on a course where you don’t have to live on A&W and near beer.
Hang in there.
Been there done that, likely to do it again…