{"id":543,"date":"2004-03-10T14:39:12","date_gmt":"2004-03-10T21:39:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-03-10T14:39:12","modified_gmt":"2004-03-10T21:39:12","slug":"surviving-purgatory-pt-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/10\/surviving-purgatory-pt-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Purgatory Pt I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They enlisted to defend our nation from attack.  Now, they are encamped on the other side of the world as an occupation force with cloudy and confusing goals.  Though they did sign on the dotted line voluntarily, with the coming of Bush and the neocons, like the proverbial horse, their job description seems to have been changed in midstream.  Here&#8217;s Part I of day-to-day life at a hellhole aptly named Firebase Purgatory, Afghanistan:<i><\/p>\n<ul>\u201cAre we [here] to alter a way of life? To stop tribal warfare? Or are we stopping the enemy of our country?\u201d Bergeron asked.   It\u2019s difficult to know whether they\u2019re winning or losing, say Triple Deuce soldiers and officers. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you measure disruption?\u201d Cunningham wondered.  If coalition soldiers leave, the Taliban and al-Qaida will come back, says 1st Lt. David Hawk, Cunningham\u2019s executive officer. \u201cThis country has historically harbored terrorists. There are a million places to hide \u2026 and no one to bother you.\u201d  In that sense, Purgatory\u2019s an emerging template, the first of dozens of similar stabilization efforts around Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re a cog,\u201d Hawk said, \u201cin a machine that\u2019s going to turn for the next 10 years.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/stripes.com\/article.asp?section=104&#038;article=20883\">&#8230; read more<\/a> <\/ul>\n<p>In this accompanying article, the soldiers of Firebase Purgatory offer some tips on how to make life more tolerable until they can go home.  One carries:<i><\/p>\n<ul>In the left breast pocket of his shirt a complete packet of memories, including photographs of his mother, brother and sister, soil from the front yard of his boyhood home in Harrisburg, Pa., and even a little Bible his grandmother received when she graduated nursery school. <\/i><\/ul>\n<p>Another, on a more practical level:<i><\/p>\n<ul>\u201cYou gotta bring baby wipes,\u201d he added. \u201cOne, to bathe with. Two, for other \u2018sanitary needs\u2019 because the toilet paper in MREs is no good.\u201d<\/i><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/stripes.com\/article.asp?section=104&#038;article=20882\">&#8230; read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They enlisted to defend our nation from attack. Now, they are encamped on the other side of the world as an occupation force with cloudy and confusing goals. Though they did sign on the dotted line voluntarily, with the coming of Bush and the neocons, like the proverbial horse, their job description seems to have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}