d.c. politics saturation

the funny thing about this city and the surrounding 'burbs is how saturated with politics everything is. everyone has an opinion about this or that and feels the need to share it when a tiny opportunity presents itself. case in point, last night as i shopped for the contents of a care package for an old friend. he's a marine, deployed in afghanistan. it's his fourth tour overseas; the previous three were in iraq.

i asked romona the cashier to keep my two bags of stuff separate, as one was a care package for a marine. we got to talking about his duties and deployments when out of the blue, "well, he's got bush to thank for that!"

silence. crickets. i didn't know how to respond. many of you don't know brian. he's a character to say the least. as long as i've known him, all he wanted to do was serve our country. as i thought more about it, it became clear to me why i'm so conflicted about the war.

do i think we were misled into iraq? more than likely. do i think that guys like brian bemoan their multiple deployments? absolutely not. if it weren't iraq or afghanistan, it'd be some other theater and far more covert. he'd be bored as hell stuck behind a desk, and while special ops guys are an anomaly, it is what he signed up for. he wouldn't still be at it after 11 years if he weren't good at it, and sad as it is, there's plenty of work for him to do. we're in too deep in iraq to cut and run. i don't think there's an easy answer, but i'm glad that there's been more positive news lately. hopefully, we can help straighten things out and our next president gets all the credit.