To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace.  Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.  At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life... You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self - your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it.  In the midst of evil you want to be a good man.  You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord...you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost.
                                                       -Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"

As part of my reading curriculum in high school, "The Things They Carried" gave me my first glimpse into a world I won't ever know intimately.  O'Brien's novel is one of my all-time favorites because it allowed the reader to peer into a privileged space - one where men and women of various backgrounds give of themselves out of a sense of audacity, out of a sense of honor, out of a sense of country.

I feel as though I can't do much more than pay lip service to their sacrifices. No action would seem sufficient enough. It almost seems disrespectful - as if I don't even have the right to speak of how their service benefits every single one us.

Being the peace-monger that I am, I can't help but comment on some people's bad habit of conflating the nature of an unnecessary and ill-guided war with the valiant service of men and women in our military.  No matter any of the Iraq War's potential future success, if you can call it that, the soldiers fighting in it are to be revered and respected, irrespective your political leaning. 

Military service and war inevitably land in all of our lives - and in my own personal case it does so on every branch of my family tree - from my mother who served as a specialist in the Army, to my grandfather who also served diligently, on to my uncle who honorably volunteered to serve in the Vietnam War and was a purple heart recipient as a result of it.  

He's long since passed, but he's had nieces and nephews to serve in the Iraq War as Air Force men and women as well as Army soldiers.  And out of his 9 sisters, 5 served in the military, one respectably as a Marine.  And I know my uncle would be more than proud of his brother who served in the Vietnam War as an Air force man only to later serve in the Navy afterward.

When I decided to write this piece today, a man came to mind who I had crossed paths with down in New Orleans more than two years before Hurricane Katrina touched down there.  He had sat in a wheelchair in the French Quarter, selling beads.  He had smiled at me in an attempt to gain my attention, but he had already stolen it due to his obvious, war-torn body: amputated legs and one arm. 

The friends that were with me at the time and I all bought beads from him as he fielded questions from us about his injuries, telling us that he'd suffered them in the Vietnam war.  I stood there like a dumbfounded child - I was actually  about 19 or 20 at the time - and all I could muster was a low "thank you" for the beads he'd just given me. 

Maybe a "thank you" was all that was necessary.  

History reveals veterans always to be defenders of their country and unselfish protectors of their fellow comrades' lives.  That will never be lost to them. And on a personal note, they'll never lose the mountains of gratitude I have for each and every single one of them who served honorably and ably and selflessly.

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