Why are we here?

The sun is coming up over the Eastern Horizon, the stench of sulfur from the oil refineries fills my nose. The wind is still icy cold, even behind my gun shield but the morning sunlight holds the false promise of warmth. Even false hope is still hope. The country is waking up. Local cars pull into the north bound lane to make it an undivided two way road for as long as our trucks occupy the south bound lane.
In the states this would cause dozens of accidents. Instead I have yet to see one. Traveling three or four wide on a two lane road, the somehow manage to sort it out. All sorts of things filter in through my eyes, get sorted into little boxes, and stored there. Types of cars, number of occupants, drivers attitude, all get sorted and stored. My brain is busy else where. One big question has been looming since shortly before dawn.
Why are we here? Leaned back behind a loaded automatic weapon, in an occupied country, I have to ask it. The arguments of WMDs, don’t really wash with me. The petroleum argument is also a little hollow. There are supply and demand issues that don’t match up with that theory. Even the conspiracy theories don’t really wash. I have to find something that fits. Am I simply a modern storm trooper for imperialism? Possibly I am crusader for truth justice and the American Way? This doesn’t wash. The simple answer the one I give to friends, when they ask why I went to Iraq, while true only scratches the surface. “I went to Iraq, because if I didn’t they would arrest me.”
If pushed I would explain that the military should not make political decisions, and we go when and where ordered because that is what the Constitution says. More than one friend has listened to that response and gone on to other subjects, they know a canned answer when they hear it. That one smells of spam.
The truck is silent, as I play with the ideas. I go back to being in college, and the deeper question of why the US has a military. The simple answer is that we have guns because they have guns. That doesn’t give me much hope for our future. There should be a higher purpose, a long term goal, in this giant destructive machine.
I think that a world where we have access to peaceful redress of grievances is a good goal. There is one problem. The use of force is easy, it is cathartic and it presents the hope of getting exactly what you want. Diplomacy is slow messy and you never get everything you want. The solution, remove the ability to succeed by using force.
W.T. Sherman expressed this view in his attack into the secessionist states. It was his stated intent to be so violent, so destructive as to make the thought of redress through force to be unthinkable. He was partially successful. We should use force to block that avenue of for people to groups or states to get what they want. But if this is the only tenant of this philosophy, it results in becoming the bigger bully. So there has to be a balance.
If you block one method of redress, you have to open another. If force is not available to the other side you have to be willing to negotiate from a position of strength and pretend as if you are not. I guess Iraq may be an example. We have proven that we are not going to be shot, mortared or blown out of the country. This means we have to go when we are voted out. We have to lose to their elected government, and show that that process can work.
There is a third part. One I think we forget, and will forget as soon as Iraq is behind us. The root causes of most conflict are economic. The root causes for much of the domestic violence in the US are economic. The solution to reducing the number of people willing to plant bombs to kill US troops was to provide jobs. It has worked. This is a lesson we might apply to our own people back home. Sun Tzu was right, the ultimate excellence in warfare is to win without having to fight.
The blimp above COB Allahlone is visible, we are on the home stretch, and I can smell the barn. I reach into my pocket and press play on my Zune. “Scotty Doesn’t Know” starts up in my ear phone. It obliterates the deep thoughts for a while, anymore and my head will start to hurt.