Same Time This Year

[aadler]

 
My Army Reserve unit was on drill this weekend. This morning, we got up at 0530, and at 0630 we went out to do an all-inclusive physical fitness test. We got it out of the way early … and twice, at 0746 and at 0803 (Central Time; it would have been 0846 and 0903 Eastern), we stopped for a minute of silence and recognition.

Some of the men and women drilling with me now were 11 or 12 years old on September 11, 2001. All of them, of course, can remember precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard. None of them are in the least concerned with tolerance or diversity. We have a different set of messages to deliver, we train extensively in effecting the delivery, and we’re preparing right now to make another trip (second to Afghanistan, fourth overall) to continue driving the point home.

In 2003, patrolling in the middle of the Sunni Triangle, I had an Arab vendor offer to sell me a cigarette lighter. It was cheap manufacture, but explicit in design: a bas-relief of Osama Bin Laden on one side, along with an engraving of the Twin Towers, with a little light inset into the side of one building that would blink red when you clicked the lighter. The man was smiling — grinning — as he showed it to me.

I didn’t shoot him. I didn’t do anything to him.

But don’t talk to me about tolerance. I’m not interested.