I was corresponding today with an old college friend about Iraq-related stuff. And it called to mind both how the world was in the early/mid-80s (when the US was making nice to Iraq, given that Iran was our Great Satan), which made me remember 1991.
I can remember having a decent-sized, if rather barren, office on the 9th floor of our offices on Lake Ave., Pasadena. I was doing xBase progamming and systems analysis. It was a difficult time, professionally, for a variety of reasons. (And it was a different wife ago, too, but that’s another story.)
I can remember a bulletin board, right outside my office door. On it I put a great big National Geographic map of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. There was plenty of nastiness toward Saddam Hussein, and I remember drawing up a very reasonable caracature of him, in the middle of a bullseye. I’m sure I have it in a stack of art somewhere.
It seems so wildly long ago. It seems bizarre that my life has changed as much as it has (pretty much all for the better), and, here we are, fighting the same guy. It’s a different war, but it’s the same war. It’s for different reasons, but a lot of them are the same, too. It just seems strange that it’s all coming back around again, like an old college pal suddenly showing up on your doorstep.
Only a lot less pleasant, of course.