This weekend was drill weekend, the weekend I used to hate looking forward to for three weeks out of the month. Ever since my return from the war, however, I view it in a different light: this is my chance to see the guys with which I shared a life-changing experience. Ever since I joined IVAW, I view it in a more constructive manner: this is my chance to recruit all my anti-war friends into IVAW. Sadly, the latter idea requires something that I never thought would be lacking in combat veterans: a passion.

Josh lives on the other side of the state from me; we only see each other at drill, although we consider each other to be great friends. I convinced him to drive the extra thirty miles Friday to come to my house; we could go out and have a few beers and get caught up. He made it just in time for dinner and we went to the best Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma before heading down to the Creekside Lounge, my neighborhood watering hole.

We talked about everything over Sam Adams and Shiner Bock: politics; how civilians' questions about the war sometimes drive us crazy; how certain comrades have lied about our experiences there; how none of the bad news on television about Iraq surprises us. It was in this light that I posed the question, "Why don't you join IVAW?" There we were, two Iraq veterans in agreement in our opposition to the war, two great friends who thought we know each other, two Americans who were not content to sit on the sidelines. I thought this one would be easy, but I was shocked at his answer.

"Why should I care? I don't know. I mean, it kind of worked out for me. I've got a new truck, more school money, veterans' benefits. I mean, the year wasn't that bad for us."

"But you're against the war?"

"Well, yeah, but why should I care? I'm not there anymore."

There I sat, stunned. Suddenly, the bar flies intermittently sitting on my lap fishing for drinks were invisible. The music was gone. The cigarette smoke became a haze that enveloped my cloudy mind at that moment. How could he say this? How could my friend be so crass? What could I do to make him "get it"? Why is it that . . .

. . . that's when the smell of the blonde's perfume in my face snapped me back into it and I knew that I would have to pick my battle another day, but I thought about it the rest of the night. If Josh feels this way, how do the less civic-minded members of my unit feel? I shuddered and ordered another Sam Adams.

The indifference Josh projected bothered me for a multitude of reasons, but two of the more pre-eminent reasons I think evaded his thinking.

To justify an entire war based upon how you benefited from it seemed to me what we had been criticizing Bush and his corporate partners for: it's war profiteering on a smaller scale.

Did I benefit from my time in Baghdad? Sure, I did. I grew as a person in ways that I don't think Cameron University or the morning crew at UPS could ever have precipitated. I'm a different person today; I'm a better person. THAT is how I benefited from this war. Yes, I have more money for college; I'm now a homeowner, blah, blah, blah . . . but I would give all that up to change history.

Mercenary: 1. working or acting merely for money or other reward; venal.

. . . and there it is. Josh had retroactively become a mercenary, a war profiteer. At this point, he was no better than Halliburton, Blackwater, DynCorp, or anyone else justifying war with profits. When your primary reason for supporting a war (or even projecting a laissez faire attitude towards it) is a financial one, you become no better than all the war profiteers that you railed against the whole year you were there. It was disheartening to think of my friend this way, but it was the truth. It was like watching a tree die.

Josh was right: the year wasn't that bad for him. While the majority of our company was stationed in Baghdad, he was sent to Diwaniyah and saw a fraction of the war that we saw in Baghdad. Either way, neither one of us ever had to drag a friend out of a humvee or shoot a civilian (I am thankful everyday that I was less trigger-happy than some of my comrades). Neither one of us are currently in Iraq; neither one of us has been shot at in months.

Yeah, so what? What about your friends from high school who are in the army or Marines? What about the active duty guys who were there while we were there . . . or are there again now? What about all the people you'll never meet but still matter? Is it really just about you? I hope not.

It is selfish to be anti-war while you're in the thick of it, but laissez faire when you're not. How you can rationalize it with your conscience is beyond me.

You see, as we work to recruit more veterans to our organization, it's not the ones who blindly support a war of aggression we have to change. It's not the robots who claim they have no opinion we have to touch. It's the ones who are just too damn lazy, hypocritical, or both. Don't rest on your laurels; let them know what you think of their opinion. Whatever you do, don't do it a bar . . . it's too easy to get distracted. ;)