Memoirs written in prose of Sergeant Robertson, Damon M. USMC while in Iraq | ...with frequent appearances of King Hammurabi.
If you are new to this journal, make sure to start reading in chronological order by scrolling down to the bottom of the oldest post in October 2004. Damon's letters from August 20th, 2004 - October 23rd, 2004 were all added to this blog on Oct. 23rd, 2004. All subsequent letters are posted in real time.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Re: Hammurabi, USMC - DMR
Dear Family and Friends: Some things I've learned, The Navy "doctors" really do believe that Motrin heals all wounds. If I ever make a video game starring Marines, they'll regenerate their life in firefights by gobbling up little floating motrin pills. Life really is short. I'd rather fail seeking my dreams than succeed in living a life of regrets. Oppressed peoples do really love the idea of voting. The argument forwarded by Arab league rulers who insist that democracy is a western, and therefore incompatible, concept are fooling themselves, CNN, and anyone who buys everything they see on TV. Anyone who says an Iraqi National Guardsmen or Police Officer is cowardly is slandering some of the most dedicated and persevering people I've ever had the fortune to meet. An Iraqi voting official asked me the other day why American news networks didn't specify that the "muja" (short for mujahadeen, literally "fighters willing to give their lives for a cause," but in modern speech read "terrorist") were foreigners. I could only tell him that the news isn't truth, it's a story being told. The idea of suicide leading to salvation is a foreign concept to Iraq, imported by Hezbollah fighters with Iranian support. The tradition traces its roots back to the ancient Lebanese Hashishim, hired killers from whom the modern noun "assassin" is derived. Some of the best lessons I've ever learned were from cartoons. One character, Vash "the Stampede, the humanoid typhoon and $$60,000,000 Man," is an outlaw. He is falsely accused. He holds all life sacred and even though men (monsters) hunt him and seek his life, he does all he can to save everyone and never complains about his own wounds or pain. He feels deeply and wrongs he has done, he takes time to see past the veneer of human frailty to see the beauty that lies beneath. He loves them, even when they continually cast him out because of their own selfishness, ignorance, and fearful hatred. He cries and with child-like innocence and wonders why anyone, anywhere, ever thought they had a right to take the life of another. In this world we've made, it's hard to see how we can fight our way out of an apparently unsolvable dichotomy: a spider traps a butterfly in it's web. Free the butterfly and the spider starves. Leave the situation as is and the butterfly dies. Is it the worst option to do nothing? Are we really helping anything when we pluck the butterfly from the web? Why should it live while the spider dies? Vash's whole life is summed up with "there's got to be another way." Here I am, willing and ready to crush the spider. :D
# posted by chevas @ 6:20 PM 