Redeployment

she blindfolded me and drove me twenty miles out of town, to a high point off the interstate where you could watch the roads stretch out forever across the plains toward all the places we’d rather be.

As if mortality is a game with rules where the universe is rational and the God watching over maneuvers us like chess pieces, His fingers deep into the sides of the world.

A liberal pussy journalist is trying to get the touchy-feely side of war and he asks a Marine sniper, “What is it like to kill a man? What do you feel when you pull the trigger?” The Marine looks at him and says one word: “Recoil.”

There’s a perversity in me that, when I talk to conservatives, makes me want to bash the war and, when I talk to liberals, defend it. I’d lived through the Bush administration fucking up on a colossal scale, but I’d also gotten a very good look at the sort of state Zarqawi wanted to establish, and talking with anybody who thought they had a clear v

We took my combat pay and did a lot of shopping. Which is how America fights back against the terrorists.

She puts a concerned face on. I’ve seen that face on women at bars when I open up. When I’m sober, it makes me angry. When I’m drunk, it’s what I’m looking for.

“Well, one was so pro-war not even my father could have written it. That guy told me I was going to write a new chapter in history. My dad underlined the sentence.”

A human being in enough pain is just a screaming animal.

Eventually, Staff Sergeant would roll up and say, “Shut the fuck up, Suba. Hajji shot at us. Lance Corporal Suba shot back. Dead hajji. That’s the happiest ending you can get outside a Thai massage parlor. Now it’s over. Gunners, be alert, get positive ID, you’ll get your chance.”