In total this journey will take five flights and fifty-five hours, but in reality it began four decades and two generations ago when my uncle died in Vietnam.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea 9-11-10th-anniversary dodds tucker-elliot
The last two days I’ve been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It’s late and dark, but I’m so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea 9-11-10th-anniversary dodds tucker-elliot
I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea 9-11-01 dodds tucker-elliot
The only thing worse than his arrogance was his incompetence. He was a bully, behaving like an ass. I saw Angel though, not him. The memorial was right there, just outside the window. It’s in the flowers, and it makes me angry. Angel liked to sit on the couch, watch TV, eat chips. She hated outside. Maybe I should have been a bully and an ass to Angel’s parents. Maybe Angel and Grace would still be alive if I’d behaved like this piece of shit teacher.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea 9-11-01 dodds tucker-elliot
We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea dodds tucker-elliot
I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It’s not so easy, moving forward.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea dodds tucker-elliot
In Korea I’d been so afraid that Sami would lose her dad. She did, but she didn’t get a flag. He went to Doha, then to Baghdad, then to Kabul, then to someplace else, and then to a different someplace else, on and on. He’d come home, leave again, come home, leave again, until one day he came home a different person altogether. Sami lost Angel, lost her family, and then she lost herself.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea dodds tucker-elliot
It’d be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It’s really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we’ve already lost.
Tucker ElliotTag: education 9-11 military iraq germany terrorism afghanistan korea 9-11-10th-anniversary dodds tucker-elliot
The military is only as strong as the other institutions supporting it.
Michael DeLongTag: strength military institution
Every war and conflict that the United States enters has its own ROE [rules of engagement]. Contrary to what most people think, the U.S. military does not have a complete license to kill, even in wartime. We are not a barbaric state, and we do not enter any war with the intention of unilaterally killing anything in our path. We go out of our way to spare civilian lives, to keep those who are not in the war out of it--sometimes even at the expense of risking our own soldiers' safety. We do this by creating strict rules to which our soldies adhere. These rules govern when they can fire, when they cannot; what type of force they can use, what type they cannot; what they can do in particular situations, and what they cannot. The reason for this is that battles can become very confusing very quickly, and a common soldier needs simple rules to guide him, to know when he is or is not allowed to kill--and who is and is not the enemy.
Michael DeLongTag: war united-states military enemy rules-of-engagement
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