I have first hand experience with war. Way back in 2001, on a balmy September day, a bunch of radical Muslims thought it would be hilarious to crash some planes into New York and the Pentagon. Unfortunately for them, hilarity did not ensue. While this all went down, I was on my last day of a field exercise in Ft. Hood, TX with the 1st Cavalry Division of the United States Army infantry. When word spread to us about what happened, we knew it was only a matter of time before we retaliated.

Fast forward to Baghdad, Iraq. It's hot. It's cold. It's gross. It's kind of depressing. You do more "gate guard" than they tell you in the brochures. It's *BANNG!!* Sorry, I just heard a loud explosion. You get used to them don't worry. It's just artillery rounds going off. No biggie. (Speaking of which, to this day when I hear a loud explosion, I get taken back to my Army days for a split second. Call it PTSD or whatever you'd like, I like to call it fond reminiscing.) Anywho, the reason I am in Iraq is still kind of fuzzy in my head. I know I have to follow my president's orders, but really, Osama bin Laden is not here. We are just here fucking shit up and getting shot at for our health in my opinion.

Still, two of my best friends are hurt pretty bad from an IED. An IED is an Improvised Explosive Device for you kids following at home. Basically it's the fancy way of saying that some moron put a bunch of sharp metal in a box and rigged it to explode when one of us U.S. soldiers trips a wire. The box goes boom, the metal goes in every direction, and now you have your friends and neighbors living with part of a Volvo stuck in their heart. It's not a good time. (Editor's note, they did go on to make a complete recovery).

They were in a Humvee probably listening to Rob Zombie (for some reason Rob Zombie is pretty popular in Iraq. You can get kind of fired up from it. I prefer Bon Jovi but hey.) and they hit this cowardly device which in turn transformed their less than armored vehicle into a metal cube of Swiss cheese....with them in it. I had no clue if they were alive or severely injured or limbless, or worse; captured. The rest of us in the rear (we call it the rear because it's a funny name.) were told to mount up and get ready to go find the poor bastards that hurt our friends. We are all pretty excited for some revenge yet scared to death that we are the next victims.

So we go to Durka Durka village and rampage through a few housing complexes. While busting down doors I see a crib and baby toys thrown about in every direction. I see tons of fruit and vegetables laying around. Ask any GI that has been to Iraq and they will tell you that their fruit is like our version of rocks. There is fucking fruit everywhere. It's like when the Air Force came in with the initial attack, they just bombed twenty thousand Whole Foods stores. I still have a hard time eating a kiwi. Anywho, I hear gunfire coming from the next room over but luckily it was our guys doing the firing. Some poor sap thought it was wise to pull a gun on a room full of infantryman. Much like the Chicago Cubs, he did not win.

So we go from room to room, apartment to apartment, complex to complex cleaning out the insurgents like the Orkin Man does to roaches. One of the guys in my squad is shot in his jaw. It was a gruesome sight to see. Luckily he survived and made a full recovery, but still...it was gross. One guy was forced to shoot a kid no older than 12 years old because the kid was aiming a rifle at us and had explosives on his chest. Obviously the kid never watched the Sesame Street that tells you not to do that. Another guy lit up a room with a grenade only to find a mother and her kids hiding in the closet. In one of the rooms was a man with enough explosives on him to blow up the world. We entered the room, he said something Arabic that is roughly translated in English to, "I have a fucking bomb on me and you are dead now and I am going to see Allah." We closed the door to the room, ran the opposite direction, heard a huge explosion went back into the room and found him on the ceiling. And the wall.....and the floor.....and well....you get the picture. Judge these men if you'd like, but in reality, it's better to be judged by thousands than be carried by six.

It's ugly. War is fucking u-g-l-y. But war is inevitable. Since the beginning of time, man has been in a war. Whether it is over land, a woman, or religion, war is a time honored tradition for each generation. Are we as a society sick and tired of it? Sure we are. Is there anything we can do about it? I doubt it. As long as one crazy person believes in a cause that others do not believe in, there will be other crazy people to stop him. You can protest in the streets, burn flags, write your congressmen...whatever. It won't help. (And you people protesting in the streets look retarded so stop.)

There is only one way to completely stop war.....and unfortunately.....it will be a war that does it.