This week's blessing is the best book I've read in a very long time that shed some light ona situation I have never quite understood....
It's no small task to build suspense--and maintain it until the last page--after you've spilled the beans. But that's exactly what Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman does in his 2006 international bestseller
From Baghdad with Love.
Kopelman's memoir is set in Fallujah, Iraq, during the 2004 US-led invasion. Though the story advertises its happy ending before it begins, the setting alone is enough to tell you getting there is going to be a bumpy, bumpy ride. There's no way of knowing what's around the corner; only that there is a corner to turn.
When Marines enter an abandoned house, they hear a strange noise and are ready to open fire. Instead, they find a fiesty puppy who makes his home in their hearts and sets Kopelman and his buddies on an obstacle course that doesn't end until Lava--the Marines name the dog after their battalion, the Lava Dogs--settles stateside.
The road from Iraq to California involves a vast network of people that includes reporters, officers, taxi drivers, vets, dog food executives.... Ironically, many of them have worked together more than once before to help other soldiers get their adopted pets home--this, despite military regulations that that are clearly stated and that everybody knows that forbid soldiers from adopting pets. There is even an organization or two set up for this very purpose.
Which you have to love. The irony is beautiful. To be an effective soldier, you have to put aside that warm, fuzzy side of yourself and focus on the task at hand; to survive war at all, you need to cleave to all that is warm, sensitive true and love it well. That network of people pulling together to reunite soldiers with their pets knows that as well as the soldiers know that.
We all know that, right?
Maybe not. Kopelman points out that there were soliders available to shoot, bury, or drown dogs in the interest of enforcing policy.
How the hell could you?
But then, how do you worry about stray cats and dogs when there's a war on, when people are injured, sick, hungry, and desperate? Why all this for a dog?
In the final chapter as Kopelman recounts his reunion with his dog at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, he describes embracing a loving, hearty friend with whom he shares some ineffable understanding, a reporter asked him the very question. "Why wasn't my time spent people instead of a puppy?" Kopelman recounts.
His reply: "I don't know, and I don't care, but at least I saved something."
From Baghdad with Love was for me a way into Iraq. I learned a little about what motivates a Marine to be a Marine, to go to places like Iraq, to serve as they do. Kopelman took me down some pretty horrifying streets, threw open the doors to brutality I couldn't not have imagined, and threw some sense around it.
Ultimately, every choice comes down to being human. That's something to think about.
The book was a blessing this week. It taught me plenty.
