The Watcher

That’s not to say that the wars of my youth were any more meaningful or any less questionable. They were just as suspect—but they were mine—and this war is not.

There’s a certain obscenity to watching Iran burn from the comfort of my couch. A certain pornographic sentiment to watching the world explode through the lens of endless short form, dopamine laden social media reels. Reels that are over before they begin—replaced by the next, and then replaced again, until any meaning they might once have carried is voided. Until the emotion they summoned is quelled and forgotten.

That’s not to say that the wars of my youth were any more meaningful or any less questionable. They were just as suspect—but they were mine—and this war is not. For the first time in three decades, I am an erstwhile soldier. My retirement certificate sits on the mantel next to the 75-inch base exchange television that I purchased with my first check from the VA. Thank you for your long and steadfast service, it says—signed, President Donald J Trump.

I have become the distant cousin whose messages buzzed into the iPhone I tucked in a special pocket on my body armor—velcro-secured so it wouldn’t drop as I ran from one bunker to another in the cool air of an Iraqi winter night.

I have become the friend who reached into someone else’s war from his recliner, interrupting his regularly scheduled programming and my frantic accountability checks of the 50 airmen who belonged to me.

I have become the long-forgotten college roommate who watched Iranian missiles fly over my head in primetime and reached across the world to check in as I watched those same missiles streak across the sky towards my sister squadrons at Al Assad.

I answered those messages as soon as the rockets stopped and the night went silent—my arm stuck just far enough outside the high-piled sandbags to find a signal. I answered all of them in a tepid effort to connect our two worlds. Your concern was appreciated and your absence noted—in passing and without malice, but noted just the same.

And now I’m one of you—watching from my bed as the names of bases I once lived on scroll along the ticker at the bottom of the headline news. Doom scrolling through Instagram, the screen of my phone stacked in front of the screen of my television – my eyes three levels removed as the missiles impact their targets. Now my messages checking on younger friends still in uniform are the buzzing interruptions of other people’s wars.

There is a certain vulgarity to falling asleep as this war flashes across my screens. A certain unaccountable shame.

How do I watch without consequence?

How do I accept the things done in my name without risk?

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Bryan Barroqueiro works in the Office of the Mayor in St. Louis, Missouri. Over 25 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, he served as a C-130 pilot and Foreign Area Officer, completing seven deployments to Southwest Asia and assignments at U.S. Embassies in Algeria and Mali. He is currently at work on a full-length fiction novel.