Posted on 02/23/2007 6:36:32 PM PST by SandRat
After days of airplane flights, a shot of hepatitis vaccine at a Texas base and a 100-mile shuttle drive down from Phoenix, Jonathan Paton arrived home to Tucson Thursday.
The state legislator who made international news last summer for voluntarily enlisting to go to Iraq was greeted by his father after a grueling six months in Baghdad, where he worked as operations officer at a major intelligence operation for the U.S. Army.
But now what?
"I didn't have anything to do today and that was sort of an odd experience," the Army reservist said Thursday. "It's just a big adjustment, going from targeting bad guys to 'What's Anna Nicole doing?' " On Paton's to-do list: a beer and a pulled-pork sandwich.
But the respite won't last long. The media inquires poured in his entire first day back. Welcome-home parties are in the planning stages. And the speaking engagements have already been booked.
He returns to work at the state Capitol on Tuesday, ready to introduce 10 bills on issues including immigration and public education.
But for a while, everyone will surely want to hear his stories about trekking around Iraq and avoiding rounds of fire in the cafeteria.
When Paton, a Republican, announced he was leaving last summer, he faced criticism from Democrats, who went so far as to say he was putting the military mission at risk by leaving during the middle of his re-election campaign for the Legislature.
"This was the plan. A lot of people were afraid maybe his stay would be extended, but it didn't happen that way," said Judi White, head of the Pima County Republican Party.
Others marginalized his service, saying he'd be far from the front lines.
"I think a lot of people thought I was just going to be in the Green Zone, and that's not what my experience was like at all," he said.
Paton, a native Tucsonan, enlisted in the Army Reserve after losing his first race for the Legislature in 1998. Now entering his second term, Paton finds himself holding a depth of knowledge about the combat situation that few politicians share.
Paton traveled through the most dangerous areas of the country, consolidated and coordinated intelligence information and came into contact with terrorists. Talking to one young detainee, Paton asked: "What's your goal here? What do you want to do?"
"Our biggest goal," the man replied, "is to kill Americans and drive them out of the country." "Then what?" Paton asked.
"Where are you from?" the detainee wanted to know. "Arizona," Paton told him.
"Well, then we're going to kill Americans in New York and California and Arizona," Paton recalls the detainee explaining.
"He was talking about it as if he was saying, 'Yeah, I took the garbage out,' " said Paton. "And that's when I kind of realized that if we leave it's not like Vietnam when you go home and lick your wounds."
What to do in Iraq
It's experiences like that that led Paton to his conclusion that troops can't leave Iraq.
"If the United States withdraws support … the Iraqi army would crumble in one week," he said.
"It's a good sound bite: 'We should just pull out,' " he said of Democratic calls for withdrawal. "But we created this situation. You break it, you buy it. I think most Americans are frustrated with the war, but I think the American public still wants to win."
Paton, a strong supporter of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, said it's clear to him that mistakes were made at the beginning of the war.
"If you look at Congress and the White House and the leadership across this country, there are fewer and fewer people that have military experience," he said. "Now that I've seen people in the military in a combat situation, I think more of those people should be involved in the decision to go to war or not."
For that reason, in part, Paton says he's now a strong supporter of Arizona Sen. John McCain for president in 2008. McCain, who paid a visit to Paton's camp late in the year, has been the leading voice in Washington for more troops in Iraq.
"When I met him there and heard his thoughts, it made me feel he was absolutely right," Paton says.
The future
As Paton wrapped up his tour of duty, Americans back home were not so focused on the war. It was the death of Anna Nicole Smith — not to mention Britney Spears shaving her head — that dominated the headlines.
"I was in the chow hall watching TV, and I turned to the guy next to me and said, 'Can you believe what we're watching and we have bombs going off outside? It's mind-boggling.' "
And in several ways the Jonathan Paton who returns from Iraq is a bit different from the Jonathan Paton who left. He's 20 pounds lighter. Though he still resorts to his signature humor, he sounds more serious.
And then the biggest change: While lots of politicians like to pretend they don't care much for politics, Paton is always open about the fact that he lives and breathes the stuff. Now, as friends speculate about his chances of launching a campaign for higher office, Paton says it's the furthest thing from his mind.
"It's hard to believe this, but the one thing that this experience has done is made that less interesting to me, at least at this point in time," he said.
His seatmate, Rep. Marian McClure, said Paton's belated return shouldn't affect his performance.
"I don't think he's missed hardly anything," she said. "All the major issues are coming in the near future."
For now, Paton's content with getting back to life as normal — and grabbing that pork sandwich the first chance he gets.
"I'm getting jazzed up about walking onto the floor of the House Tuesday," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind, this will make me a better representative to my district."
* Contact reporter Daniel Scarpinato at 307-4339 or dscarpinato@azstarnet.com.
Welcome him home and thank him for his service:
jpaton@azleg.gov
Sheezzzz...for a minute I thought you were talking about General Patton, only with a little misspelling...
He operates in the AZ legislature about the same though.
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