I'll apologize right up front for the length of this post. It won't be short. I thought about making a standalone essay but this post is a great place to start.

I had wanted to fly airplanes since I can remember. My father was a USAF enlisted weather guesser until I finished first grade. Aircraft were always near. I can still hear, see, and feel the long string of B-47s blasting off over base housing where we lived. They departed at 10 second intervals during the large exercises that trained for nuclear war. The shaking of the very ground with the incredible amount of smoke and deafening noise is something to be experienced. It's eye opening. Especially when it happens at 3 AM.

I didn't want to fly those big pigs. I wanted to fly fighters like the F-86s and F-84s that were on the base that was my father's last duty station. He arranged for me to accompany him to the hangar and sit in both when I was 6. I was hooked. The rest of the next 16 years was aimed squarely at obtaining an engineering degree and going to USAF UPT (Undergraduate Flying Training). My parents, only my mother not long after my father separated, had squat all so only through a three year ROTC scholarship, taking 20-21 quarter hours of engineering every quarter for three years, and 70+ hours a week working during the summer was I able to get the degree and a pilot slot. I had a ticket to ride. What I did in UPT would determine the rest of my life.

I was delayed entering UPT for 8 months by a failed differential calculus class the end of my second year. I couldn't repeat it without graduating a couple months late. I already needed the dean's approval for the load I carried. There was no alternative. That class put my UPT class date back enough that the oil embargo of 1973 got in the way. Those extra months until I finally did get to start the class in March 1974 changed the climate for assignments. The drawdown from Vietnam was in full swing. The USAF was shedding pilots at a terrific rate. Flying jobs for experienced pilots were few and far between. The target rich environment for fighter assignment dried up over night. I did well enough but didn't get the fighter I wanted.

I went off to fly the tanker for over three years and spent a lot of time refueling the B-52s that replaced the B-47s that had me in awe so many years before. I also spent every third week sitting alert to be immediately available to refuel FB-111s and B-52s that would destroy civilization if the horn sounded. I really hated it. Lost dreams are had to get over. It took awhile. What changed the trajectory I was on was an assignment back to the training base where I'd gotten my wings. I was going to be a T-37 IP (Instructor Pilot). It was my second choice but, hey, buh'bye tanker. I promised myself that i would never again do that.

Despite being disappointed at getting the very unsexy Tweet instead of the hot T-38 I found my place. I loved teaching new kids right out of college. A T-37 (T-6 these days) student gets his/her foundation for the rest of their flying career during those four short months. Who they will be as a pilot is formed there. I've never met a USAF pilot, no matter how old, who doesn't remember the name of their Tweet IP. I count my three years as a Tweet puke as the best of my professional life. I did well and did a lot of things that would have not been if I'd gotten a fighter or become an IP right after UPT.

The first friend in the story, D, had suffered that fate. They're called FAIPs (First Assignment IPs). They're always well into the top of their UPT class but their USAF flying career is on hold and they will be the left handed, red headed step child wherever they go three years later. They will be three plus years behind their peers and have a lot of catching up to do. Fortunately, they're usually very good people who have mastered the flying game and instructing at a PhD level. Most do very well.

D was a young 1LT in the flight I was assigned to. He lived two streets from my house and we ended up commuting together until I moved to another flight to be the assistant flight commander. We did everything together for the whole time he was at the base. We were brothers. He'd been bitter about being a FAIP and was concerned he would not compete well for a fighter with the golden boys in the squadron. I didn't know then that he had changed his plan. He was on track to an airline job. Part of that track required him to be able to leave the USAF at the six year point. Going to the instructor school, PIT, as an IP was the only way to preserve the ability to get out when his current commitment ended. By the time he left the base for San Antonio I was a flight commander leading 13+ IPs and 54+ students. An influx of very senior IPs interrupted the best job I ever had and I followed him to PIT several months later.

There I met B again. B had been in D's UPT class. Both had been at another UPT base where B also became a T-37 IP but D was moved to a different base. Already good friends they rekindled their friendship and were in the same flight. I didn't really care that much for B at first. He was confident, aggressive, opinionated, and a hard charger. We were too alike but we came to appreciate each other. We didn't work together until both B and I went to be flight examiners at the wing headquarters. D had left the squadron and moved down the street to be a maintenance test pilot. He flew both the Tweet and the Talon on Functional Check Flights (FCF) following major maintenance. As far as I knew all three of us were looking to improve our follow on assignment chances.

That all changed the summer of 1983. D dropped separation papers with an eye to the airline jobs that didn't exist. Every major airline had pilots furloughed except Northwest Orient who wasn't hiring. His wife was pregnant and it didn't seem like a good move. That all changed after the New Year. Our first day back B and I were sitting at our desks when in walks D. The weather prevented flying so we had been catching up with holiday break news over some coffee. D floored us with the news he had received a job offer from Northwest in a class starting the end of January. A couple hours later he's off to plan the FCF that the weather had delayed. B and I look at each other and say together, "WTF are we doing here?"

Neither of us had any idea the other had been weighing options. I wanted to get an advanced engineering management degree or go to U-2s. I had other friends flying the Dragon Lady. The backup to the backup was to remain in the training world. Those were all good plans and acceptable. I would get out before going back to the tanker. B wanted any fighter he could get. I didn't have that option. The boat had long ago sailed. Three months later I knew that I was going to be sent back to the tanker regardless of what I wanted. Both of us had separation dates of our own and began interviewing. The stars aligned and we ended up in the same class at Northwest with D who was by now eight month senior to us and would end up flying the 747-400 as a captain for almost ten years before retiring early. B and I did well enough but those eight months put us more than five years behind D being able to go to the -400. It was an awesome ride anyway. They both retired early and I stayed a little past the previous mandatory retirement age of 60 when it changed.

That's a lot of background. What it says is that despite all of us being pretty much on the same page, supporters of the country and particularly the military, we were going to change. We all began civilian careers as career military officers who had gone a different direction due to circumstances. There's a lot we had missed in the world. Twelve hour days 6+ days a week do that to you. We knew what was good for us as military officers but only had one perspective with little time to consider alternatives. The Ronnie Raygun years were good for the military. Pay increased and the shortages and limited resources to do our jobs were ending. None of us understood that so much of what the country was being told by the government was doing was lies that served an agenda.

I was the first to notice something not right. Gulf War 1 didn't seem exactly right to me. I got the oil connection but it hadn't occurred to me that it was about getting the Gulf States off of all the American oil. I supported all of my buddies still in the military. They'd been told to go do a job. We're bound to that duty. Questioning why are we doing your duty and rightness of the orders gets you and your people killed. We do our job and do the best to keep our people as safe as the nasty business allows. What the military does is up to the civilian leadership not us.

The years following sending Sadam home until Gulf War 2 were eye opening to me. So much didn't seem right. There were too many contradictions between official government policy and actions with what my lying eyes told me. By the time of the Afghanistan adventure it was clear that going into Afghanistan was totally fucked up. W and Dick's great adventure into Iraq was off the charts in wrong. Anyyone with two functioning brain cells, the ability to read and think, and some honesty knew this was an illegal war of aggression based on manufactured intel and lies.

It was at this point that the three brothers ran into trouble. Our differences became irreconcilable. B and I had become much closer than I had been with D in a long time. D was reactionary and borderline racist. He'd been held up at gunpoint on a layover by a black kid. (It never occurred to him that being too cheap to take a taxi, he and his first officer had intentionally walked through a notoriously dangerous area. Self reflection was never his thing.) He was deeply shaken and from then on became hostile to anybody not exactly like him. I had stopped trying to discuss the Middle East with him. He wanted all of them dead and off our land, er...oil. B and I could talk and there was only the slightest chink in his support. He was in a mode where he supported the military and not much more mattered. We talked a lot about the evidence. He was clearly uncomfortable with it. W was a good ol' Texas boy and likable and he supported the military. He would support his president and government.

I seem to recall the rift popped wide open during the run up to the Iraq invasion. I got an email from B that reiterated his less than full support for the Afghan ops and decision to invade. It was more of a what else can we do thing. Iraq though was an existential threat. My reply was that if Iraq was such an existential threat then why was he not on military leave from the airline and back in the USAF. Furthermore, he had a military age son. Why wasn't he joining up? Thousands were dropping everything and doing their duty. Why don't you guys?

The next day following a thoughtful reply from B I got a blast from D. B had forwarded him my reply. D was seriously pissed. How could I say such a thing? Then he goes off on a rant about Sadam, nukes, CBW, and the full Monty of lies. So I asked him why he had three sons but none of them were joining to fight the threat that would destroy America? (And would appear to still be doing just that right now but not in the way imagined. No?) That touched a nerve. He and his boys were too valuable to send to the Middle East. They were all exceptional students who needed their educations to be able to do great things in life. I thought, "Cheney? That you ol' boy? How'd you intercept my email?"

That exchange began a running battle that lasted until about 2005. D and I haven't spoken since then. It was my fault. I stepped over a boundary D set. Unreasonable, I thought, although that wasn't my choice to make. I should have tried to make the amends called for but I just can't. It will be taken as vindication of his beliefs. If anything, he's even more reactionary, angry, and off the rails than before from what I hear. trump was his signal to let fly.

B, on the other hand, is closer to me in his thinking than I could ever have imagined possible. He has been for a long time now. So many of the official positions are obvious lies or the product of horrific thinking and scheming. What we see in the world is completely different from what our leaders would have us believe. We have to be blind or willingly refuse to consider what is clearly visible but buy it anyway. He, like I, still supports the people in the military. Some senior leadership and many true believers in the ranks may be less than deserving of our respect but they're all stuck with the difficult responsibility of duty. The civilian leadership is another matter. I have no use for any of them. They have failed to faithfully perform their duties for decades.

So far, everything I told my friends would happen if we went into Afghanistan and Iraq have come to pass. Where I was not completely correct has been due to a worse result than I could ever have imagined. It's long past time to be out of Afghanistan, Syria, and so many places. The only thing keeping us there is someone in the US is getting $omething from us being there and ego that tells us throwing good bodies and money after bad is a righteous idea. I'd say pride but that's false. How can we be proud of the past nearly 20 years? The only thing worse than having spent so many lives and so much treasure for naught is to spend one more life or $1 for an unjust and pointless cause. But this is the American Empire we're talking about. There is nothing too stupid, too pointless, too cruel, too illegal, too corrupt, or too unjust that will stop those someones from getting their$ at the expense of the rest of the world.