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Nov 16, 2007 8:13 am US/Mountain
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Hnida Assesses War In Iraq & American Attitudes
by Brooke Wagner
DENVER (CBS4) ―
CBS4 Medical Editor Dave Hnida is getting settled back into civilian life after his most recent tour of duty in Iraq. There he was Lt. Col. David Hnida, a doctor serving in a combat hospital.
He said the draw of duty motivated him to sign up for the Army Reserves. "An awful lot of people like to talk and not do, I decided to be a doer," Hnida said.
"My family has a lot of military tradition. My father was in World War II. My brothers had been and I was the only one who hadn't."
"It was probably the worst decision I've made in my entire life but then again probably the best decision I've made. You think you did some good things, you hope you did some good things but then on the other hand, man, war sucks."
For Hnida doing good things meant balancing the emotions that come with treating soldiers and the insurgents who targeted them.
"We didn't know what the heck to do do. We were ordered to take care of insurgents and the deal was that you just had to put yourself in doctoring mode. It was really hard because I'd be taking care of an insurgent who'd probably been shot in the head because he was planting an IED (improvised explosive device). And two stretchers down were the two guys he'd blown up. Who do you take care of out of the three?"
"The insurgents would always come in with guards who you knew are fully gunned and loaded, who just wanted to shoot these guys. They knew that you had just taken care of the guy who had hurt their buddies yet the discipline of them standing there and watching ... they understood. They hated it just as we hated it but those are the rules of our war right now."
Hnida said he gained new respect for those who stand and serve. "The term is citizen soldiers. That is truly what they are, they're citizens who are just being soldiers. They're the ones who really suffer. My time was really hard but it was much shorter than what other people endured and I came home with all my body parts."
Though he came home with all of his body parts, Hnida was a target in iraq. "The Geneva Convention says as a doctor, you're a non-combatant and they're not supposed to shoot at your or hurt you, but i carried a rifle around. I got shot at, they tried to kill me. There were no rules. It was a rule-less conflict. Still is."
Hnida has faced many questions about the war in Iraq since he has returned to Denver. "The No. 1 question after 'How are you?' is 'How are we doing? Should we be there?' The answer is, I don't know if we should be there but it doesn't matter because we're there."
"The most striking thing coming back was how polarized this country is. You're either for the war or against the war, and if you're for the war everybody else is a chicken if they want to pull out."
He said the situation is more complicated than is portrayed in the media. "A couple of very bad people can make everyone look poorly, but 99 percent are great. A lot of them are just kids and they've got different view of the world."
Hnida said he believe American leadership failed by not having enough plans for what might unfold in Iraq. "They've failed to unite us as people and given us confidence that even though things look bad, there's hope. I think that's one of the things that's gotten us through the roughest times. We've always had hope."
Hnida has a proposal to help build a feeling of hope, he wants each of us to support our country, right here at home.
"Even if you're going and volunteering at the soup kitchen, that is helping our country. You have to do something that's going to help your country. You don't have to go to war to figure that out."
(© MMVII CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)