20 years ago I was boots on ground in Iraq for the first time. Roughly 1.5 million Americans can say something similar as veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
Many were in their 20s, and for many it was their first experience ever leaving the US.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to adequately put into words what deployment felt like. I write fun goofy articles. I don’t write about the fucked-shit. I don’t have the language.
I don’t have the nerve.
But I’m not writing about my experiences in Iraq. I’m writing about something that came before. Something I still to this day can’t get out of my brain. A bit of brainwashing that I don’t think any generation of US troops before could have ever imagined.
Continue reading “Military Atrocities, Nü Metal, & Me.”
Fancy Boys Club 