Today, I got to go downrange and pretend to be a body guard for some host nation officials. The unit placed a commo station on top of a holy religious site and the people were furious about it. The district administrator demanded a meeting with the Brigade Commander and set it up for today. I put on my dishdasha and kufi and took them to the meeting. It felt good not having to wear my prison suit for a day. Of course, driving through the desert looking like an Arab and carrying an AK-47 just screams shoot me when you’ve got a unit who hasn’t been deployed yet.

As always, I won’t say the name of the unit, but they are very cocky. They seem to believe that we still own Iraq instead of the true of our presence now as guests. Yes, there is a lot of pressure not to send us packing yet, but the country of Iraq is an autonomous nation now. If they said leave and we didn’t leave it would be a reason for war. We would make even more enemies than we already have if that’s possible. This unit doesn’t quite get that. Their mentality is “we’ll do what we want when we want to do it.” So, they are in for a very difficult 30 days. The fact that I had to dress up like an Iraqi to watch a meeting firsthand just goes to show that something’s wrong. What’s a gringo doing wearing a man-dress? Or jundee ameriki (american soldier) as they say in Arabic.

The trip out there was hopping, literally. The unit met us near Fort Irwin and escorted us out to where the commander was. The trip is about 25 kilometers from here. Naturally, instead of taking the nice, concrete road the unit takes the bumpiest road possible. I was in a chevy blazer that is older than I am and probably has the same shocks as when it was built. The shocks were more like pogo sticks. Every little bump we went over catapulted us as far into the roof of our the truck as our seat belts would allow before violented yanking us back in our seats. After realizing that my body can’t take all this bouncing, I stopped following and moved over to the nice paved road right next to the route we were taking. Ahhhh, smoothness. As we approached the FOB, instead of taking the smoothest route, I think the unit created their own trail. Was this punishment for making them escort us so that we could yell at them? The beatings were over quickly and the meeting commenced, then we went home. Obviously, I can’t talk about what happened at the meeting.

On the way home, I got on the paved road as soon as I could. But, until that point I just took my sweet little time while the unit “escorting” us went along their merry way without us as if there was a huge seafood buffet waiting for them. Too bad we weren’t “killed” by insurgents to teach them a lesson about what it means to escort someone.