Supporting my Brother

By Dillon Bouma
Published: 12.08.2006

The doorbell rings. Pizza’s here. I pay the delivery guy. This is usually one of the times I’d be hanging out with my brother eating pizza and playing Xbox. But not tonight. He’s sitting in a trailer in Baghdad, Iraq.

My brother Jared joined the Army after Sept. 11, but because he was only 17 at the time, my mom had to sign the paperwork with him. He left for basic training a week after he graduated from high school. Jared arrived in Iraq in October 2005 and was over there for a year.

When Jared first left for Iraq, I hated the war, because it was taking my brother away and putting him in harm’s way. The shock that he was actually going “over there,” where we wouldn’t be able to talk to him, hit me like a semi. I disagreed with the war because it contradicted our country’s rules of engagement: that we wouldn’t attack a country unless they attacked us first. I saw the invasion of Iraq as an unnecessary waste of human life.

The night before Jared left to train for Iraq at Fort Lewis in Washington, we stayed in a hotel in Phoenix just down the street from the armory he’d be leaving from in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. After we dropped him off the next day, it was so hard to get back in the car without him in it. I felt like he was already in Iraq. I just turned my phone off and stared out the window. That’s when I realized that I had to support Jared no matter what — and supporting him meant supporting the war.

It was about a year ago today that Jared called me to let me know he was getting on a plane to Kuwait. I was leaving school when I got the call. At first I thought it was a wrong number, because I didn’t recognize the area code. But it was Jared. I ran to my mom’s car as fast I could so we could both talk to him for as long as possible. We said goodbye. We said we love you, we miss you. Mom and I drove home in silence.

Jared was gone. I didn’t know whether it would be for just the year or permanently. These were some of the loneliest times of my life, sitting on my bed and looking across the hall at his lifeless room.

Jared would e-mail my mom stories from Iraq about how people would say thank you for what you’re doing, and bless you. Most U.S. media claim that the Iraqi citizens hate us for taking over their country. But Jared’s stories were proof to me that people over there are happy that Saddam Hussein is gone. I now agree with the war, because we are giving people the chance to not live in fear. I wouldn’t have known this without Jared’s stories.

It’s hard to hate the war when my brother is a big part of it.