This this sinking boat and point it home / We've still got time

If anyone says that the war isn't going on back home, they are wrong and I have the pictures to prove it.

If you drive out near Barstow and you look really carefully, you'll find the sign to Fort Irwin, an army post. At Fort Irwin, if you make it past the guard posts without being killed (or turned around) and drive about another 40 minutes into the desert you might, if you're lucky, hit several fake Iraqi or Afghani towns. The National Training Center is one of the last training centers for army troops before they are deployed overseas for battle. They simulate real battle conditions for soldiers, technicians, and every other warm body that is shipped off. They allow civilians to be on base to act as embedded media.

I, instead of rolling on the ground trying to shrapnel while infantry troops knocked down the doors in a small Iraqi village, spent my time roaming around a very calm base with some members of the Aviation crew trying to get soldiers to talk to me.

It took a lot to get through this weekend. I'm uncomfortable with the military and that's putting it mildly. The fact that they recruit mostly from poor communities and communities of color to go and impose policy through brute force upon other nations is only part of it. They build and perpetuate a certain kind of personality and mindset amongst people-- do what you are told, without question, regardless of what the consequences of your actions might be. Given these things in mind, walking onto a room buzzing with soldiers at midnight and then being escorted into a tent with only male soldiers, this weekend wasn't looking too good.

But, as is the Coro way, you suck it up and start asking questions.
Soldiers are trained not to answer. The lower ranking soldiers are so good at this that they barely talk to you if not pushed. The more experienced soldiers and officers know how to gauge civilians, so they'll talk you around in circles before you realize that you might not be getting the real story. This is all true, IF you aren't talking to a Coro Fellow (haha. I'm joking. Okay, not really.)

What I learned this weekend:
- A shocking number of people join the military for the benefits
- They're KIDS. Many join immediately after high school and the most experienced are still under 40 years old...
- They marry early (and meet their spouses in strange and quick ways)
- The guys are like stupid teenage boys that like to punk each other (and drink way too much)


It was hard not to walk away from the base feeling a sadness that these young women and men are going to be deployed in only a few months, facing death and causing it.
This weekend was a lesson in distinguishing the person from the action. I sat across the table from the mechanics who will fix and maintain the Apache helicopters that will drop missiles in a country that is already in shambles because of our actions from a decade and a half before. And those mechanics? They're just... kids.

It was a surreal experience that frequently crossed between dream world and real world. As easy as it was to see that the simulation was not real, it was hard not to forget that it is happening and has been happening half-way across the world.

Now I've just gotten rambly and I apologize.
I guess I'm still just thinking...