G.I. Joe:
They used to call me a fortunate son.
Not because I was lucky—but because I wasn’t born into power.
George W. Bush though? Now that was a fortunate son.
While other men were learning how to bleed in the jungle, he was learning how to fall upward. Daddy’s name on the door. Daddy’s friends holding the ladder. Texas drawl, Ivy League bones. When the war came knocking, he found a window and slipped out the back. National Guard—paper shield, soft landing. Chicken hawk with a flight suit for the cameras and no mud on the boots.
And then came 9/11.
Smoke in the sky. Fear in the streets. Real bodies. Real dead. Real grief.
And suddenly the fortunate son had his war.
They held up the poster—him with the bullhorn, standing on the rubble like a commander—but every grunt I knew could see it: this wasn’t about justice. This was about permission. Permission to finish old grudges. Permission to test new weapons. Permission to turn fear into oil, contracts, and flags wrapped around coffins.
Iraq didn’t hit those towers.
But Iraq paid the bill.
They sold it like a used car: weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds, trust us. And the fortunate son smiled that simple smile, the one that says don’t think too hard. Meanwhile, kids from trailer parks and immigrant families were shipped off to fight a war that had nothing to do with protecting home and everything to do with protecting interests.
I buried friends who never even knew why they were there.
That’s the difference between a soldier and a chicken hawk.
A soldier pays in blood.
A chicken hawk pays in speeches.
So don’t tell me about courage from behind a podium. Don’t talk honor when you’ve never had to choose between pulling a trigger and living with the ghost afterward. History remembers who showed up—and who sent others in their place.
The fortunate son got his war.
The rest of us got the scars.
And that’s something no legacy can ever launder clean.
