MOLI VIEW™

Late at night on August 2, 1990, I was sitting in a bar at a US military intelligence base just outside Munich, Germany. I'd spent the summer working at the snack bar in operations, serving breakfast and lunch to a bunch of bright young guys who, apart from their uniforms, seemed a lot like the guys I went to college with back home. That night the beer was flowing, and a group of young soldiers was processing the news that Iraqi troops had invaded Kuwait — and that they soon might be called to leave the cubicles where they cracked encoded messages in air-conditioned comfort for the front.

"Are you combat ready?" a burly young man with a blond buzz cut demanded of his buddies, one by one. Faced with silence, he announced: "I'm not combat ready. These guys have been killing each other for 10 years; how are we supposed to compete with that?"

This soldier was concerned that, compared to the gruesome war waged between Iraq and Iran from 1980 to 1988, his experience on the base that summer, alternating eight-hour shifts with softball tournaments, basketball games, and trips to local nightclubs, would not measure up.

But the calls I received from one of his buddies at the front suggested that the routine in their undisclosed location went on pretty much the same; at least, that's what my friend wanted me to believe. "There's a lot of sand over here," he told me. "We're playing a lot of volleyball."

Back on campus that fall, I protested the bombing of civilians in Baghdad and the devastating consequences for the environment and the historical treasures of that ancient land. I was happy that my friends came home unharmed.

The calls I received during the second Gulf War couldn't be more different. This time they came from a battle-hardened career soldier, a captain of the Italian carabinieri, a highly skilled sniper and paratrooper who had quelled riots in Bosnia not long before. He had a tattoo on one arm that read: In love with life; married to death.

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