Trick or Treat

(Intro)
So I'm sitting at my daughter's 1st grade Halloween parade this morning... (insert typical glowing comments about how cute my kids are) and I'm sitting next to a young, healthy looking man who apparently has a child in kindergarten. When the hoopla was coming to a close, my daughter's old teacher makes a quick announcement over the p.a. "One of the fathers of a child in my class is going back to Iraq tomorrow and want you all to wish him the best." I fell apart.

(Set up to poorly worded attempt to express how I feel about the war)
Unlike my spouse, I don't feel comfortable expressing political views in this arena. Frankly, I'm not up to date enough to participate in healthy debate and, though I don't fear confrontation, I'm more effective when face to face with my adversary. I also enjoy keeping it light; at least here.

(Poorly worded attempt to express how I feel about the war)
Can anyone remind me why we're taking young men like the one I was eighteen inches from and sending them to a hell? The man we attacked was a dictator. Dictators are usually pretty bad dudes that just want to be left alone. Yes, they are generally bad to their people, really bad, like sick bad. However, when did it become our job to decide to send our troops into a country that doesn't want us there to oust a dictator that we put into power, to ultimately, so far anyway, kill over a thousand of our men. Don't give me the "eminent danger to our safety" bull shit... Saddam was happy to sit in the big chair in his little country. He doesn't even get along with our friend Osama, had no stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, and couldn't put a bomb together for more than ten years, if he even had the desire to. Chemical and biological weapons are a joke. You could detonate a mustard gas bomb a block from my house, and aside from the hole it left in the ground, the chemicals blow away in the wind. Sure it would hurt or even kill a few, but so do the RPG's that are fired at our troops every day. What the fuck!

(Conclusion)
Okay, so I expressed some angry political views. Couldn't help it. When I saw that young man, with a kid a my daughter's school, all I could think about was his kid and his wife waiting for him for him to come home when there is a very real possibility that he may not. Sorry, I'll try to keep it light from now on...

Did you ever hear the one about the nun, her chimpanzee, and the three-legged camel? I'll tell you another time.