Life in Perspective

Questions. There are days, many days, when I ask myself why I am doing this? Why I come to Iraq, subject myself to discomfort and danger? Why I put my wife and family through the worry and seperation? All for the sake of pictures when good ones seem few and far between-- often doubting that anyone actually sees them or cares.
Then I am humbled. Almost daily some soldier actually thanks me for what I am doing here. That soldier who has often spent YEARS here, to my two months at a time of site seeing. That soldier who is sucking dust, getting blown up by roadside bombs, walking long patrols under heavy physical and emotional loads, watching his friends fall, worrying about his family worrying about him at home. That soldier, or one of his family members struggling with the seperation and fear, stops me in the chow hall, or sends me an email thanking ME, and I’m always dumbfounded, at a near loss for words, and entirely humbled.
I’m often asked what soldiers think about this war. For most of the ones I’ve talked to, it’s quite simple. They believe in what they are doing. Their missions are to make Iraq more secure, to train Iraqi forces so they can take over, to bring much needed resources to the people, to capture, kill or convert the insurgents and keep the guys beside them alive. No politics, no B.S. They largely believe that what they are doing is slowly and gradually working and that given enough time and resources they will succeed. That are convinced they are helping each other and the Iraqi people.
These are often 19 through 25-year-old guys with a sense of duty and resolve that is hard for me to fathom. They are making life and death split second decisions under some of the worse conditions imaginable. Yet they approach the challenges with the wisdom of experience and professionalism far beyond their years. They do this day after day with little complaint.
I often feel like I’m living in a world spinning wildly out of control where we are losing sight of our ideals, self-absorbed, trying keep up with the rat-race that can be our lives. Too focused on what we want to get out of life instead of what we have to give. Too rushed to “get there” to enjoy much of it. I’m as guilty of all that as the next person. But then I come here, to Iraq, with all it’s miserable implicatations, and I get to walk among people I respect. They care about each other and jobs they are doing above all else. Their motives are good and life is, dare I say, simple. The basics kept in proper perspective. And here, of all places, I sometimes find the faith and hope that so often aludes me in “real life.” If I’m good enough and lucky enough, maybe I will manage to make the right pictures or find the right words to convey who these soldiers are. I think that’s why I’m here.