{"id":371502,"date":"2025-11-11T12:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/371502\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T12:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:19:10","slug":"opinion-iraq-war-veterans-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/371502\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Iraq War Veterans, 20 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">\u201cWhat are you gonna do when you get out of the Army?\u201d \u201cBe a [EXPLETIVE] rock star.\u201d \u201cSometimes I remember: \u2018Oh, yeah. That\u2019s right. I went to Iraq.\u2019 Now that I have a kid, sometimes I find myself thinking: Is he going to end up going to some war that ends up not doing any good for the world? And receive a bunch of shitty care after? I think we were in Baghdad for a few days, and then we were in a firefight outside the Abu Hanifa mosque, and it was just totally bizarre, just, you know, [EXPLETIVE] gunfire everywhere. A couple of R.P.G.s and I was just thinking: What the [EXPLETIVE] am I doing here? And that question never went away. I don\u2019t know how to explain the war to myself and have yet to have any clear thought of, like, yes, we actually made a difference there because we didn\u2019t at all. There was no difference [EXPLETIVE] made. Maybe for the worse.\u201d \u201cThe area I come from is very small. Not a lot of opportunities for people fresh out of high school. So it was either community college or go do something to travel the world, get paid for it. Experience places like this. I had swore I\u2019d never joined the Army. I watched my brother come home all rigid when I was like 12, and I was like, no way. And then he called me and he said, \u201cYou watching this [EXPLETIVE]?\u201d And I said, \u201cWhat?\u201d And he goes, \u201cTurn on the television.\u201d And about 30 seconds after I turned on the television, the second plane hit. When that happened, one, I was mad, you know, This is my [EXPLETIVE] backyard. But I immediately thought, you know, this is what I need to do. I need, I need to defend my \u2013\u2013 I just felt it. I just had to do it. I had to go join my brother. I had to be by his side. There was no way I was going to let my brother go into a war and me not be there.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll keep one saw back here. Just know where your people are. and you got the rear. So you need to start holding that like you [EXPLETIVE] mean it. That deployment was funny because there was no clear-cut mission. The whole time you\u2019re wondering, like, what are we really doing? Are we really in combat? Are we not in combat? Who\u2019s actually the enemy? Now you\u2019re in Baghdad, now you\u2019re in the heart of Adhamiya. Now you\u2019re, now what?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat are you gonna do when you get out of the Army?\u201d \u201cBe a [EXPLETIVE] rock star.\u201d \u201cSometimes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":371503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,67263,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,9956,2969,11457,148904],"class_list":{"0":"post-371502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-baghdad","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-us-military","22":"tag-usa","23":"tag-veteran","24":"tag-veterans-day"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115531033159778820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}