In Search of Lost Sarin

Thanks for the 90s, uhh, Saddam.

The move from our family home, the first in thirty years, raised an ancient dust.

I brushed it from the nameplate on the cartridge. Super Battletank 2.

The memory loaded. I was back with my father, in early spring, traversing Anbar province, hunting mobile Scud launchers.

“It’s the economy, stupid!” Not Gulf War Syndrome destroying Reagan’s grand army?

I sneezed. The mulberry pollen, probably, always bedeviled me this time of year, and the dust from the move proved intolerable. And as the phlegm flowed freely, I could not help but think, if these most housebroken of irritants could lay my robust, vigorous, never-napping form low, how could it not have been the oil fires, the exploded sarin at Khamisiyah that flew downwind to Saudi staging areas, and razor dust of the desert that broke the juggernaut of Reagan Republicanism?

How would a nation that elected Donald Trump not once, but twice, knowing from start to finish his plans to create a ten-thousand-year Trumpreich have swerved from such a manifest destiny thirty years ago due to a relatively minor recession?

Democrats never win a Presidential election without a catastrophe. But Slick Willie’s win in ‘92 beckoned, a Calypso for antiwoke centrists who want nothing more than to get the Party back to grilling and to finally shut up about all this race science.

The 1992 recession just wasn’t big enough to get a fascizing America to cry uncle. But what could be such a world-historic catastrophe that it could derail the coming Republican fascist regime for decades? And how could it slip by unnoticed for so long?

I could not see the dust directly. But if I turned toward the shaft of light pouring through the sliding glass door, I could see the infinite psychedelic swirls.

Sarin, too, leaves no trace. Tasteless, odorless, and invisible, it ripples through the air like the muscles in a panther’s back, closing on you as fast or slow as the wind.

As I tilted and blew into the cartridge, I could see Saddam’s sarin everywhere.

Over 600,000 Americans deployed, and at least 100,000 exposed to the exploded sarin at Khamisiyah. Round up, they always underreport, that takes us to 250,000. A third of Reagan’s grand army, gone in an instant. The British only lost 20,000 at the Somme in a day, and they still think about it; Antietam was 25. The world would have never seen anything like it. The effects would be catastrophic and impossible to miss. My mother told me not to touch anything when we visited the military surplus store because it could be contaminated. We all knew what happened, but if everyone knows there is a problem, it becomes like sarin. No one notices it. You just get a bit of a twitch.

Perot. Perot came out of nowhere. But why isn’t there a Perot every election?

Did he? He did. He entered the race running on the troops coming home sick, and hit Bush for giving them the “swamp gas” explanations for their new spasms. The Vietnam guys were still talking about Agent Orange, and everyone was afraid it was happening again. And then Clinton would chime in, not afraid to break the wall of silence from the Pentagon because he never served.

Nobody trusted the government. The black helicopters were out there, R.E.M. was right, it was the end of the world as we knew it, the black budget was growing with every new Congressional appropriations meeting, and the X-Files were a Fox psyop to make truth-seekers look like kooks.

Vietnam was an echo, but the Gulf War was the Scud landing in the tent.

McVeigh. He was a vet. Him too?

Yes. He got tested for Gulf War Syndrome. It was in the water. Not just fluoride, but the chemicals. If the government did that to me over there, what else will they do to me here, they thought.

That guy who murdered the woman, Louis Jones. He said he was sick, too.

Isn’t that what happens, though? When political movements like that are defeated in the field, they devolve into terrorism. After the nazis came the Wolverines, however brief; for us, Republicans going down meant the militias would lash out.

My hand shook just barely turning the cartridge, my muscles sore from the move. No, they wouldn’t have been injured like you think. But if someone saw us taking those boxes out and decided to stop by right now, could they get the drop on me? And if they could get me, would those able-bodied vets who got a touch of sarin or too many burned-up hydrocarbons still be able to check off all the boxes to be combat effective?

That’s where there never was a Super Battletank 3. Because we never had a big war until Iraq again. It was all air. Because no one wanted to fight on the ground, because there might be a repeat of where everyone who goes comes back sick again.

There weren’t any headlines for it, because everyone knew. It was normal, like drinking water. If you were an alien, you’d have no idea how our lives depended on it just reading the news. And it got handled, so there was no need to keep making a fuss about it. Clinton took good care of everyone, so the vets could go back to their gun shows and monthly VA visits didn’t have to find the next Perot.

But the dark matter still shows up in your calculations, no matter how elegant. During Iraq 2, they went in with too few this time. Because they couldn’t recruit enough. They could never recruit enough, and still can’t. They closed all those bases and said it was the peace dividend, but when the pandemic hit, a million people left the office, too, and never went back.

The last thing the basement feds wanted anyone to know was that chemical weapons actually worked.

It took a while, yeah, they bounced back. But how long did it take to rebuild? Decades after losing the army that won the Cold War overnight. About as long as we had been there. And now the beast was back, and it was time for us to go.