Day 1, 1,753 words

Can you believe the nerve of him? Thank you for being the one decent guy here. I guess since it's your job you're a bit more obligated to not take sides. Still, it's nice to think not every guy at a bar is just trying to get lucky. Yes, I will have another and no, please do not put it on his tab. I wouldn't want to give him that joy. Look at him, sitting back there still glancing this way, pathetic. Like I'm going to walk over there, chauvinistic pig.

Anyways, I do love what you've done with the bar. I agree completely, the atmosphere is just contemporary enough that it's not too sterile. Everyone needs a nice break now and then from how compartmentalized these airports are, Frankfurt especially. I've also got to give you credit for always being here so late. How many airport bars do you find the same bartender at every time during the week? I don't feel like you're the bartender I see when I'm traveling for work, I feel like you're the bartender down the street from my house. No, I promise. I don't drink a lot, just frequently.

I'm sure you've seen all kinds of characters in here at this hour. Considering you're just about the only bar open all night. Ah, now who's this walking in? Ha, funny how soldiers are the only ones willing to wear their work clothes out. Oh my, here comes a whole platoon. Well, sadly in my experience soldiers can be far worse than our friend who's still over there trying to buy me a drink. I'll see you again next week, but please warn me if my admirer has been scoping out the bar next time. Oh no, I insist, that tip is the least I could give for you shooing away that creep earlier.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Hi. Yes sir, I'd love a glass of whatever's the special for tonight. A lambic,awesome! Ah, that, that is a great beer. What happened to that lovely lady that was just here? Did we scare her away? Well, no worries, from what I can tell, you have plenty of interesting people here to talk to. Yes, I am indeed an American solider. I have to admit, it's nice to get some R&R here in Germany. Afghanistan is beat. There's no other way to put it. Hot, deadly, and a foreign land no, I promise, I'm not describing my wife. You really do have an interesting personality. Oh yea, I agree completely, you are certainly in the right line of work. I've got to give you credit for that. In my line of work I don't have to even try to be witty. Shoot first and ask questions later is our philosophy. Believe me, it's saved my life on more than one occasion.

So you've been listening to the television reports. Let me tell you, embedded journalists don't know the half of it. We always try to keep them out of harm's way. Can you blame us? Imagine having an extra person to worry about being shot, no training, just thrown in there, always thinking they can just keep filming the things that are going on. Do you have any idea the stress that puts on us? We've got to keep ourselves alive, worry about our squad mates, try to carry out whatever mission we've been assigned to, and here comes happy Joe Blow, straight from New York city, with no war experience, trying to give us shit for shooting instead of talking. Firstly, unless you've been to Afghanistan you have no idea how frightening it can be from the get-go. Hardly anyone speaks English, people aren't even worshipping the same God as you. I might've well been deployed to Mars. No amount of training will prepare you for that place. I can see why the Russians spent a decade there only to have their asses handed to them.

Now, what you've got to realize is that we do a lot more than just shoot at people. I wouldn't have signed on for another tour of duty if I didn't think I was actually accomplishing something. I'm sorry, but risking your life every day is stressful. If I didn't feel I changed someone's life every now and then I don't think I could keep doing it. No, I completely understand where you're coming from. I've heard that argument a lot, especially from the U.N. troops there. It makes sense, we can't be too prideful in simply fighting for our country. After all, pride is one of those seven deadly sins, and I'd rather know I was in good shape with my maker than just jump when my Lieutenant said jump. Heaven is a slightly better reward than a pay raise.

There's a lot of great things we do every day. We've brought drinking water and schools to thousands of people. We've provided steady electricity to places that only sporadically got it a few years ago. We've been in the middle east long enough to see some real changes. Women are having more of a say in their culture, something that has always really seemed strange to me over there. Women can't even drive a car in some places. You can imagine the looks they give to our female soldiers. Can I get an order of the stuffed zucchini, after I get to munch on something I would be happy to keep talking.

No no, I'm open to criticism, but I expect a level of respect at the same time. After all, we're all just trying to live our lives. Who's to say your job as a bartender is any more ethical than my job as a soldier. Sure, you're not holding a gun, and potentially killing someone in an instant. You have to remember, I'm not going out to kill people either. The liquor you pour is just as potent a killer when people don't treat it with respect. My job is no different. If you don't respect someone with a gun, you stand a good chance of losing your life. That's the biggest problem any soldier has. So many of us have this attitude that we've been trained, we're the best of the best; that sometimes they lose that basic respect for the power of a bullet. Any gun can kill just as quickly as any other. It doesn't matter who's behind the trigger, the result's the same.

Ah, now hold up. I know where you're going with this. Yes, it is difficult. When your superior officer gives you an order what do you do when you yourself don't like the result. Well, you really don't have too much of a join when you're in the service. If you don't carry it out it's trouble for you. Yes, I do know about the Nuremberg Trials. Ha, when was the last time an American soldier tried to use that defense in court. It just doesn't hold up buddy. Sure we can try enemy combatants for things like that, but when it comes to our own, it's a lovely double standard that I can't fucking stand. I guess the Nuremberg Trials are a decent thing. After all, it's not the commanding officers that have to go about committing unspeakable things, it's the grunts in the field doing things. You've got to remember though, when you're in the line of fire your friends expect you to cover their ass above anything. If there's a shred of doubt in their minds that you wouldn't do something just because it might hurt someone else they're going to lose that trust that you'll make sure they make it home. I know, who's to say a soldier's life is worth more than some Afghan child, but when bullets are flying you don't have time to sit down and guess what Stuart Mill's Great Happiness Principle would have you do in the situation. It's purely survival instinct, you're in situation that's been part of mankind since the dawn of our species. It's a state that happened before we were able to question what's ethical and what's not.

Ha, you think ethics has always been around? Let me tell you, if you spent one minute in a firefight with insurgents willing to kill you, you wouldn't give to seconds thought to shooting the fuckers as fast as you could. Everything's out the window when you're life's on the line. There's no time to think. Like I said, it's that weird time when you realize you're no different than the ancestors that bashed each other's heads in with rocks to see who could win the girl or the meal for the night.

It's primitive and animal-like, but something completely beyond any academic ethicists bullshit. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should go around killing each other for fun or anything. I'm glad we have standards in place to keep people in check. You just have to realize, you can't act the same in every situation. There is no golden rule because there is no golden scenario. We can't all live in polite and tidy mansions selling stocks. Some people are going to die at the end of the day and others are going to grow rich and fat. That's life. It'll never change. Sure, I'm all for stopping as many people from dying as possible, but it's not something that's ever going to happen. You have to take steps toward it as the best you can do.

I remember there was a math class I took in high school, I think it was pre-calculus. The teacher started talking about how if he stood in the center of the room and kept walking half as far to the door, would he ever get there? Of course, a bunch of students said yes, but as he got closer, he was eventually so close he couldn't physically move without touching the wall. That's kind of where I think we've gotten to as a species. We don't drop nuclear bombs on each other and act saintly, but we've gotten so close to the wall that we can't notice the tiny improvements we can making. It'll always seem like we're doing awful things, unless you compare it to all the great things we've done. Being in a war I think I can safely say we do more good than bad, and at the end of the day that's all you can hope for, improvement, not perfection.