And the news breaks...

Click here. One of the brigades from here is coming home WAY early. All of us have known this for weeks, but it just went out to the media this morning.

There is a lot of good in that. For one, the Iraq war is nearly over. With that, we no longer have to hear wives and soldiers who are still involved with Iraq going on about how it's still a war zone, and being all dramatic about the deployments there, as if it's just as dangerous as it was three years ago, when we all know it's not. (Name me the last time someone died of something combat related there. It was a long freaking time ago.) For another, we can finally have a little closure on this thing. Thak did three tours there, when it really was a horribly dangerous place with people dying left and right, and seeing this war relegated to the history books is a good thing, because it's really over.

The thing that gets me, though, is how the wives of this brigade are reacting to this news. Seriously, if someone told me, 4 months into a deployment that my husband was coming home, I would be bouncing off the walls and dancing in the streets. Every one of the 4-1 wives I know are mad that the deployment was cut short. They won't get as much money this way.

Seriously? Do you know, every time the national news media has covered something Thak was part of, it was to do with him going somewhere really dangerous, really unexpectedly, to do something nobody in their right mind would ever want to do. Once, it was the invasion of Iraq. Another time, it was the Anbar Province troop build-up (he had been deployed to Baghdad and was rerouted at the last minute to Anbar when he got there). The other time was the troop surge on Baghdad, and when he was sent forward ahead of the rest of his brigade, along with a few others of applicable specialties, to aid in the search for missing soldiers. In that time, he has set records, helped find internationally infamous criminals, and was part of high profile operations in a capacity you will never hear about unless you get him drunk enough (and that's hard to do. He really doesn't drink much.) There is a reason he has medals that are uncommon for people of his rank to have while they are still alive. It is because every single media circus that ever pertained to us involved him going somewhere that he ran a greater than average risk of coming back with his head blown off. The only time it was a positive media circus for us, was when Thak was among the last of the surge troops to come home. Every national news network was at his homecoming ceremony. To get to that point, though, we went through 15 months of things I would not wish on anybody. By the time he came home, none of us cared about the media coverage. We just wanted it over and done with.

Knowing this, I really want to shake these 4th brigade wives for their reaction to their husbands' early homecoming. Don't they know how many people over the years would have killed for that news? Don't they know how lucky they are to have only a 4 month deployment? Sure, combat pay is nice, but it's not worth the cost of earning it. Is it that soldiers and families these days have forgotten that? Is it that the real fighting has been over for so long, that people are truly just using deployments as a safe way to earn a few thousand extra a year? I don't get it.

America, end these wars. It's been going on so long people have lost perspective on what it really is.

4th brigade wives, no more complaining. Remember that you are lucky. I do not pity your lack of combat pay due to early homecoming. Nobody does. Take the early homecoming and be happy.