Mike Senyo
Staff Writer
March 20, 2005, marked the two-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and as much as the Republican Club wants me to say the pledge of allegiance at the top of my lungs and back junior Bush, I won’t.
I was in auto-shop class, first period when the invasion officially took place and a month before that day I was sending off not just a friend, but a brother to Kuwait. Oscar is the kind of guy who you always want as a friend and he was my drinking buddy before he left. He’s still my drinking buddy today, only today he drinks a little more and gets high a little more—not as a vice, but as a way to vent.
Oscar joined the reserves November 27, 2000 with his friend and neighbor to become an ammo specialist. Of course this was before we were a nation that bullied the entire world because it didn’t fit, dare I say, our Christian and capitalist convictions.
Oscar was all for the war on terrorism, but when the idea came to invade the country of Iraq, that was another story. Oscar found out that he was going to be deployed over the phone in February.
He had just got home from work to come home to this. The minute Oscar found out he was to be deployed, he went straight to the kitchen and started pounding beers. Needless to say he was a little depressed.
When Oscar was in Iraq he saw his share of action taking heavy fire from AK’s and rifles, but it was OK, you just have to “aim yours in that direction and sooner or later they’ll put their heads down.” While the bullets were flying around his body and above his head all Oscar could think about was the mission at hand and taking care of those around him.
“You can’t think about home, it’s too depressing and that’s when you freeze up,” he said. With all that pressure and your life on the line you block out home.
Being in a war zone for 11 months and 24 days took a mental toll on Oscar as well, and emotionally, he was drained.
“At night, before you’re falling asleep, you start thinking about home and that’s depressing. I always worried about my family, like what if something bad happened and I might not find out about it?”
So to ignore the depression and the hostility of being in a war zone, Oscar started to get high and drink the bad booze that couldn’t get you drunk enough to forget about home or make the war go by any faster.
On the other hand, he said the war put everything into perspective.
“I can see what our government does. Countries that have nothing, the Sudan, we don’t do anything about it. But since Saudi Arabia has such close ties with the Bush family, they felt unsafe with Saddam in power, so they call up their buddies. It’s not really what they taught me democracy was in high school,” he said.
So I ask junior Bush and all of his followers this: is it worth it?
Is my friend’s life worth putting on the line not once but twice, because now Oscar may have to go back due to the lack of troops and enrollment in the armed forces, for your personal favors or what you believe is morally correct? Because your morals don’t match mine. Please reply at msenyo@ulv.edu. You guys probably don’t have the guts. I mean you don’t even put your own kids in the war. Who’s going to inherit their trust funds if they die?
Mike Senyo can be reached at msenyo@ulv.edu.
