THe Harting Family

THe Harting Family

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I Should Be Happier..But



So I have been listening now for 2 days of all the excitement about Usama Bin Laden. Funny thing is this, I always hear the news first, I am plugged in too everything. Iphone, Laptop, TV, Ipad...everything. But that day I was not. I went to a movie and dinner with some friends, friends that are sharing this deployment with me. We had a great time, went to see Fast 5..great movie and distraction, had a nice dinner. Too much talking in the car to listen to the radio..end of night. We come to the base, and right away we see something is different. Elevated force protection..me being me leans my head over from the driver side as I am presenting my ID card and I say, "Hey what's going on? Why the extra security tonight?" and to that the very young Marine at the gate strapping his M-4 with a death grip says, "Oh we have been invaded by Mexico"..ok smart guy..but whatever we laugh it off and he nicely says, "well Ma'am (I know ugh) there is a lot of chatter right now so we are looking out" so knowing what chatter means, I say "well thank you" and we go on our way. So as we are pulling in to get in our cars to go home all of our phones start ringing with the news and people are coming out of their homes and we get the news. Simultaneously we all look at one another and we know what the other is thinking, "What does this mean for our husbands?" Our husbands are currently in one of the most not so nice areas of Afghanistan, without saying where lets just say...this is not the time we want to hear they have just Martyred Usama Bin Laden. So we all talked for a bit, we decided it is just a thing, nothing to worry about knowing our men already had a tough mission so this was just another obstacle they may or may not have to face. But the whole night and up until this moment it has left me very uneasy. I am happy he is gone, I am happy that all his victims, from the Embassy bombings, the Cole and all the other horrible acts this man ordered have justice, or at least the figure head of this is gone. My wish was that he be captured alive, and he be paraded in front of the world media and exposed as the frail little man he was, to take away the myth of this all powerful Oz. But that wasn't the case, and I wouldn't have wanted that if it meant even one more of our brave troops was put in harms way.
But I have to tell you, this happening when our men are still in the fight makes it hard to be overly excited. I haven't spoke to my husband but I have a feeling that he celebrated at the news, that he felt a victory for all they have done in the last 10 years that led to that, and I am reminded of what he always says,
"Babe, the Taliban do not need a reason to kill us, given the chance that is what they are going to do."
Please keep our service members still in the fight in your thoughts , know that their mission is not over.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Very well put. I've felt some relief and some fear at the news. But your husband is right-- they don't need a reason.

Hopefully we can keep that from happening and your husband comes home safe and soon!

Meadowlark said...

I suck, because honestly, I didn't care. It won't make a bit of difference to terrorists...in fact, I spent much of the evening annoyed with the young college kids in their fraternity shirts wearing MY FLAG around their shoulders. REALLY???? YOU are wearing MY flag? Perhaps you should do something to serve this country and THEN you can earn that right. But I'm sort of a b*tch that way.

I wanted to say that I read an interesting opinion piece on this and it definitely brings up food for thought. It's neither right nor wrong, but interesting. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-10/opinion/husain.binladen.videos_1_bin-laden-videos-laden-s-islamic-muslims?_s=PM:OPINION

peace.