Just heard from my mother that my Uncle Pete, age 51, is being redeployed to Iraq in a few weeks. He was in Afghanistan a couple years ago. It was an open secret he'd be called back up, but it was still shocking to hear he'd be going There, just after his new house - his first ever - got built.
More below the fold.
He's a doctor/surgeon (he's been in the Army reserves for years but has become very antiwar, especially this war) and is getting a 90 day
sentence tour. He says he will be home (which is Tucson) by the holidays. I can't imagine what he'll see in Iraq. Or what will happen while he's there, to him and to others, to everyone on both sides. Not a day goes by that I don't think of the people there, what's been done to them.
My uncle has traveled the world over his entire life. There isn't a place he hasn't been. He's a sucker for food and languages and people; he still writes to friends he made in Afghanistan last time out. I have no doubt he'll be an asset wherever he's deployed. He's a great guy and a fantastic doctor. He's fixed hockey knees (as a trainer at the U of MN) and saved children. He's dug shrapnel out of people.
I want to make a t-shirt or a sign to wear/carry when Cody and I go to the protest in DC on 24 September that says something about supporting my uncle - because I do; he doesn't want to be there, but he's a medic, not a soldier - but that this shitty war is based on lies, is totally not the answer, and I'm fucking mad that he got called back at 51 to put American soldiers and Iraqi kids back together because some greedy fuckers thought this whole thing was a good idea.