The Awkwardness of it All
Well, it looks like yet another slow day at the office. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I have my own office and can get away with blogging for hours on end, but I am getting bored of surfing the internet. This morning was pretty busy, but all is quiet at the moment.I'm kind of in a weird situation. I was brought in for this job as a temp, as the person I was supposed to be filling in for is a sergeant in the army reserves. He expected to get called up to serve in Iraq (or Afghanistan, or wherever our next war is). It's been four months and he still hasn't gotten the call. I do pretty much everything he used to do---answering phones, helping customers, scheduling, all the paperwork, and about 800 other random duties. I have no idea what he even does anymore. I'm sure he does something, but it's a mystery.
At this point he doesn't know if or when he'll get the call. In the meantime, they have to keep both of us working even though there isn't always enough work to go around. They've said they don't want to lose me, so we're just kind of in a holding pattern in case he does get called up (and he will, since Bush was "re-elected" and will likely be starting a new war soon).
The thing is, to put it in militaristic terms, I am occupying his office now. He's taken up residence at a cramped cubicle out in the lobby while I work in the corner office. He's been there for years, so it feels really strange. I overheard an older man who works there say to him, "Didn't that used to be your office?" He replied with a "yup," but I could hear a touch of anger in his voice.
I have usurped much of his power, and I think he's started to resent me because of it. He used to talk to me, but now he just kind of ignores me. We don't have a whole lot to talk about, so I'm stuck dealing with the awkward silences. I'm sure he knows that they need me there for when he does get the call, but I can tell he wishes I was gone. I'm sure the uncertainty is hard as hell on him, since he could get the call any day.
I don't know, maybe he figured out that I'm a liberal and that I don't believe the war has been handled well. I made a comment once indicating my feelings on the matter and ever since then things have been different. (uh oh, I sense another political rant coming on...) Some military people think you need to support whatever our leaders decide, right or wrong, in order to care about the troops (and incidentally, I'm really sick of the word troops...What a dumb fucking word). My personal belief is that if you "support the troops" (again with that fucking word), you should want them to live, or if life must be lost you should want it to be for a worthwhile cause.
If Bush tried to sell us the war by saying "We're going to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East," we would have told him he was off his rocker. He knew we wouldn't have bought it, so he sold the war to us based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction and non-existent ties to Al-Qaida.
I'm not saying that the people of the Middle East don't want or couldn't achieve democracy. I'm just saying that there is no fucking way that we will be able to impose it upon them. Everything we touch over there will be poisoned, and there will continue to be a growing number of people determined to prevent us from winning. I hope I'm wrong about that, I really do.
At any rate, I wasn't planning on going off on a political rant, but whoops, I did. The whole thing hits home really hard when you know someone who could be sent to fight in a war at the drop of a hat. He's a great guy and I know he'll do his job as a soldier well, but I just hope to God he doesn't have to go there.
While we're on the subject of Iraq, I like to point out that America lost 135 soldiers in the month of November. Here is the list. Most of the dead were younger than 25 years old. (Of course we have no idea how many thousands of insurgents, and tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed.) It's a bloodbath. Oh yeah, and now we have to send more troops and extend tours for 10,000 soldiers.
It's all very disturbing to think about. Maybe that's why so many people try not to think about it. At the moment I don't claim to have any solutions for this mess, but I think it's important for people to open their eyes and recognize this war for what it is, and what it could become if poor decisions continue to be made by our leaders.
Okay, now I'm done.
posted by Skrambled Egghead Reborn @ 1:21 PM
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