A different priority

November 02, 2004

It’s Election Day, not that you could tell by what’s going on here.

At 9 a.m., a car bomb killed six civilians at the Ministry of Higher Education and rattled Camp Gunslinger and Fort Apache. The site was relatively near the two bases, so the explosion’s concussion literally shook the ground here.

Rockets pounded Camp Taji shortly thereafter.

No soldiers were injured in either attack, but the blasts mean more work for them.

The soldiers hit the streets like every other day, looking for roadside bombs, hunting for the people who fire rockets and load cars with explosives.

The various television sets at Camp Gunslinger flip between cartoons, movies and news shows where analysts surmise the various endings to today’s vote.

No one seems much interested in it, though.

Of course, today isn’t exactly Election Day. By the time results start rolling in from American polls, it will be mid-morning Wednesday here.

By then, there will be a whole new day’s worth of crises to fix. There will be more big booms, more threats, more work.

These soldiers made their ballot selections weeks ago, marking absentee ballots and mailing them in to be counted later. They voted and moved on.

It’s what has to happen here, a world away from the politics that dictate their lives.

Because in Iraq, a soldiers’ work is about lives. It’s about the lives of each soldier’s buddy, the lives of Iraqis and the constant attempts by insurgents to end them.

Posted by Amy at November 2, 2004 11:29 PM