When my fiesty, funny, iron-willed mother-in-law passed away some years ago, there is one image from her funeral that I will never forget. 

Her casket was placed gravesite and we were all gathered under the green canvas tarp to pay our final respects before burial, most of us seated in folding chairs provided by the funeral home.

I say, "most of us," because, standing behind her casket were three of her cherished grandsons--my son Dustin and his twin cousins, Travis and Troy.  At the time, the boys were all R.O.T.C. college students, and though they wore suits and ties, they stood ramrod-straight behind their grandmother's coffin, their hands clasped, staring out over the crowd of mourners with granite faces.

Travis and Troy are identical twins, and so resemble my son--or he resembles them--that we sometimes call them "the triplets."  They are all tall, dark, handsome young men, and all had short hair and were clean-shaven.

All three--and their younger cousin, Michael, who was in high school at the time--would go into the military,

Michael and Dustin into the Marine Corps as enlisted men, Travis and Troy into the Army, and they would all deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan in "line" companies--which means, either infantry, artillery, Stryker brigades, or special forces--for a total of six deployments between them so far.

Since that day, Michael and Dustin have completed their active-duty commitments and moved into civilian life.  (They both intend to take advantage of the new G.I. Bill benefits this fall, Dustin for a second degree and Michael for his first.)

Travis and Troy decided to head into a career course as officers, as did their dad, who retired at the rank of brigadier general with the U.S. Army special forces, and both have assumed company commands.

But on that sad, sunshiney day, they were young college men who did not realize that, standing so straight behind their grandmother, they resembled Secret Service agents on protective detail.

Not that anyone expected bad guys to come crashing into the burial service; it's not that they were deliberately protecting her or anything.  It's just...

Words fail me.  Bear with me while I search for it...

That attitude of protective vigil was something that-- coming from a family of combat vets and career military men--it just came NATURAL to them.

A few years later, while Dustin still had a couple years to go to finish his degree and Travis and Troy were winding up their studies, 9/11 happened.  Troy was, at the time, in Washington, D.C., serving as one of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  His dad was working that day at the Pentagon.

He raced over and helped pull bodies out of the smoking wreckage, not knowing for hours if his dad was one of them or not.

A few weeks after that, my son called me and told me of his decision to go into the military, even though, at the time, the country was gearing up for war with Afghanistan and, just as he was graduating, Iraq.

When explaining his decision to me, he said, "I don't feel comfortable being one of the ones needing protection.  I'd rather be one of the protectors."

I've never forgotten that, either, even though I was opposed to the Iraq war then and now.  It doesn't mean that I don't understand why he felt compelled to step up for his country.

When I was asked if I would consider reading and reviewing Susan Galleymore's powerful book, LONG TIME PASSING, Mothers Speak Out About War and Terror, I did so gladly, because Galleymore is, like me, a combat mom and also a peace activist.  (Although she is much more active in the peace movement than I am; my activities have been limited to speaking out and writing to end the Iraq war.)

For those of you who may not have heard of Susan Galleymore, she gained some small measure of celebrity when she actually traveled all the way to Iraq, to the Sunni triangle, during some of the worst fighting of the war--2004--in order to have an hour and twenty minutes to visit with her son, a soldier with the 82nd Airborne who was deployed at that time.

She is a founder of MotherSpeak as a radio host for Raising Sand Radio, and works tirelessly in the cause of peace.

She also works as a counselor on the G.I. Hotline.

However, I had some reservations when I agreed to read the book, and those have not changed after having read it.  I say "reservations," but perhaps the correct word might be "frustrations," because I see such a widening gap between those who work the hardest for peace on this planet, and those who are tasked with preserving it.

I am speaking, of course, about the U.S. military.

 

But before I go into that, let me say upfront that this is a worldclass, first-rate, outstanding work of journalism.  Ms. Galleymore traveled all over the world at considerable risk to her own life and safety, in order to interview mothers whose lives had been impacted by war, whether they lived in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank/Palestine, or Syria.

Some of the women's children had served in the military of their country's for one war or another, and some had been innocent victims of war, like the Iraqi woman whose family was pretty much wiped out at a U.S. army checkpoint even as she, herself, had been shot.

Galleymore also interviewed a number of moms of U.S. soldiers and Marines for the book.

To my knowledge, this is the first such comprehensive project of its kind, and Galleymore is to be commended for her courage and skill in bringing it about.

Most people never think of the mothers.

She describes her visit to see her son in some detail, though she keeps the moments of their brief time together private, which is as it should be.

Galleymore did not go to Iraq all alone; she went as part of a contingent of Code Pink activists, and with their assistance and support, spent the rest of her time in-country interviewing Iraqis and what American soldiers would talk with her.

While out in public she always wore a traditional hijab, or head covering, both for added protection against religious extremists and out of respect for the culture.

The women, their drivers and translators, all risked their lives--one was held up at gunpoint by highway robbers on the road to Baghdad and stripped of her money, passport, and return plane ticket home.

War was all around them.  At one point, Galleymore emerged from an Internet cafe in Baghdad that she had discovered, to find the entire area cordoned off following a suicide bombing that had taken place nearby.  The nice American sergeant with whom she'd chatted the day before in the cafe was now standing guard and ordered her, in no uncertain terms, to get out of the area.

When Galleymore presents one of her interviews, she does it virtually without commentary.  She simply identifies the person (or changes their names if they request, for security reasons), and then presents the interview as a narrative, which gives the reader the feel of listening in on what must have been a tape-recorded session.

It is compelling reading.

She does not editorialize, but the thrust of all the interviews remains pointed and precise:  war is evil, horrible, destructive, and miserable.  There can never be any good to come of war anywhere.

I do not have a problem with Galleymore's focus, and I have a great deal of respect for her sheer guts, her determination, her genuine anguish.

She is right, of course.  Any military person will tell you that there is absolutely nothing glorious or or romantic or heroic or glamorous about war.

The only people who think so have never themselves seen it.

But those whose brains have been sered by the horror of war never forget it.

Back when I was a very young teacher, I invited the school custodian to come and present a program to my history class.  We were studying World War II, and this fine gentleman who was invisible to most people who worked around him, had actually served in Patton's army after the Normandy invasion, and had literally been one of the soldiers to rescue and release emaciated Holocaust survivors from concentration camps.

As he was telling my dumbstruck students about this experience, he mentioned that the Nazis, knowing the American troops were almost upon them, had herded a number of the prisoners into a barn, bolted it shut, and set it on fire.

The American troops could hear the screams, smell burning flesh--it was that recent to their hurried arrival--and they tried desperately to save the victims, but the barn was fully engulfed and there was nothing they could do.

After telling that story, the man burst into tears.

Later, he told me that simply retelling the story had opened up such wounds that he'd suffered nightmares for the first time in years.  I was absolutely horrified to think I had been responsible for his anguish, and vowed never again to be so insensitive.

Galleymore is to be commended for her coverage of the kinds of invisible wounds--and some not so invisible, such as those suffered by amputees and brain-injury survivors--that all military war veterans have to face. 

It is a national shame and disgrace that the Bush administration was so eager and hurried to get their glorious little war going in Iraq--after having invaded Afghanistan--that their military hospitals, such as Walter Reed, and veteran's clinics, were absolutely unprepared for the tsunami of injured Iraq and Afghanistan vets who swamped their facilities.

And it is evil that the sheer ineptitude of an administration that put political hacks in charge of the most sensitive and important offices allowed the problems to languish for years while our veterans suffered in squalor and miserable aloneness, before a scathing exposure by a newspaper forced the issue into the sunny happy-talk world of chickenhawk armchair warriors too busy campaigning in front of photo-op troops and waving flags to notice.

Not to mention 99.9% of the country's population, content to slap yellow-ribbon magnets on their gas-guzzling SUVs while less than one-percent of them fought their Groundhog Day war over and over again.

I'm not arguing with any of Galleymore's outrage on those fronts, and I applaud her diligence in chronicalling it.

But I'm still frustrated.

I am frustred by the yawning gap that still seems to exist between American peace activists and the U.S. military.  (Can't speak for other countries; only the one I live in.)

Most peace activists have little if no experience whatsover with the military itself--the military mindset, their training, their daily lives during combat deployments or any other place for that matter.

Consequently, they tend to view the entire apparatus with ingrained suspicion and no small measure of hostility.

Now, in all fairness, the same can be stated in reverse--no question.  Most active-duty troops, particularly in line companies, are very young--just out of high school, some of them.  The youngest of them have never learned critical thinking skills, have never really been out of the towns or urban neighborhoods or suburbs where they grew up.  Stereotypes can be real to them, and that includes the idea of "long-haired dope-smoking hippie-freaks" who gather outside their bases holding up signs.

And in all fairness, this image does get bolstered by people such as drill instructors, who are trying to remake each recruit into a soldier or Marine or sailor or airman.

A joke familiar to all who've been through boot camp is, "The Marines (or army or whatever) are your mama now."

So the gap exists on both sides.

But it seems to me that, since peace activists are the first to want to understand and empathize with an opposing point of view, to reach out, to find common ground--then it would behoove most of them to take the first step, and sometimes, this means with their own child.

You'd be surprised how many children of peace activists join the military.

And what usually results is tearful shouting matches at home when the parents find out and try to refuse to "let" them join or scream things like one mom I know who said, "I didn't raise you to kill people."

Reading Ms. Galleymore's description of her visit to Iraq was revealing on that score.

At least it was to me.

She described with great eloquence the mind-numbing, paralyzing agony of having a child deployed to war, of being rocked by nightmares and awakening in the middle of the night to find her hands folded beneath her chin "in the prayer position."

While Galleymore admits that she was completely unprepared for the ennervating power of having a child deployed to war, the symptoms she describes--nightmares, obsessive thoughts, sleeplessness, horror-fantasies of the knock at the door, constant anxiety and sleeplessness--are all normal, actually, for anyone who has sent a cherished child to war.

I have a friend whose son was deployed along with mine to Fallujah during one of the biggest battles in Marine Corps history.  He is a psychologist in charge of dozens of other psychologists in a large clinic, and he told me that, in spite of offers of help from well-meaning colleagues, "nobody" could help him with his overwhelming fear and worry except other combat parents like myself and similar friends.

We could "talk each other down" on bad days, of which there were many.  And it is an ongoing sadness that, with military bases flung about all over the country, and with the huge civilian population of the United States, that parents and siblings and girlfriends and boyfriends and close friends often live hundreds or thousands of miles from a base where they might find kindred spirits and support groups.  Only spouses living on base have access to this kind of care.

So the rest of us are pretty much alone, and pretty much have to seek one another out through websites set up by our sons or daughter's units.

Usually, we stumble onto such a place, find a few people with like-mindedness, and then set up our own private chat-groups through Yahoo or some other place.  We exchange phone numbers and set up calls to one another.

We get through.  But it's sad that those of us coping with war have to be so alone while we are doing it.

Galleymore doesn't seem to have had anyone of similar circumstance to help her with her terrors, and became consumed with the idea that she had to see her son, no matter what it took.  She found the Code Pink group that was planning a trip, and signed on with them.

When she first e-mailed her son to tell him of her plan to visit him in Iraq, she did not hear from him for a while.  A couple of weeks, I believe she said it was.

Then, she returned to the house one day to find an angry, panicked voice mail from him, begging--or maybe demanding--that she not come

"Don't come," he said.  "It is too dangerous.  If you do come, go to a rifle range first and practice shooting.  Then, carry a big gun while you are here."

His message rattled her considerably, but one of the things that had bothered her was that it came so late after her e-mail. 

She wondered if maybe "someone" had told him of her upcoming visit and had "pressured" him to discourage her.

See...this is the suspiciousness I'm talking about.

Her son was, at that time, actively deployed with an army airborne unit in a hot combat zone.

His life, at that time, was not his own by any stretch of the imagination.  I expect that his unit often went out on grueling patrols that could have gone on for days--or rather, nights, since so many of them took place at that time, for a number of reasons.

For him to even check his e-mail would have meant even getting back on base, which was iffy if they were on a mission.

Then, he'd have to wait in line, maybe for hours.

Then, he'd get one-half hour, period, to check his e-mail and sort through probably hundreds of messages that had piled up from unsuspecting civilian friends back home who thought he had as much time as they did.

Every day that he was not on base, he or other guys in his unit were getting shot at, missiled, mortared, grenaded, or blown up by IEDs.

They could not trust anyone, because the same people who came out to shake their hands by day were most likely the same ones slinking out by night to set bombs and kill them.

When he saw his mother's message that she was coming for a visit, I can imagine right off that he was absolutely HORRIFIED.

Just getting into the country was a life-threatening enterprise in 2004, for everyone.

I expect that he got right up, went over, and stood in another line, maybe for hours, to call her and insist that she not come.

I can't imagine how frustrated he must have been to get a voice-mail when he finally got the phone, but when he urged her to go to a gun range and to bring a big gun...Ms. Galleymore does not seem to comprehend that he was THINKING LIKE A SOLDIER.

Soldiers spend a great deal of time learning to handle firearms and never.  I repeat.  NEVER.  Put their rifles down.  They carry that rifle to the latrine, to chow, to EVERYWHERE.

A rifle, to a soldier, is LIFE.

He was trying to PROTECT his mother.

His message was understandably upsetting to her, but the fact that he urged her to carry a firearm was distressing to her peace-loving heart.

Later, when the gaggle of women gathered at the border to head by van into Iraq, their driver gave them stern warnings that he would have to drive "very fast" in order to outrun militia members, terrorists, highway robbers, and other brigands and bad guys in order to get them to Baghdad.

Galleymore says the women rolled their eyes at one another, because they assumed he was "being dramatic."

I'm sorry...WHAT?

Did they not realize that they were entering a war zone? 

Had none of them been paying attention to reports filed by battle-hardened combat reporters such as Dexter Filkins of the New York Times and Tom Ricks of the Washington Post?  Did they not know that even walking down the STREET in 2004, most anywhere in that country, was to risk your life? 

Kidnapping?  Murder?  Did they not remember that an American woman who was married to an Iraqi, had lived there for two dozen years, and worked for an aid organization providing purified water to the Iraqi peope, had been kidnapped and BEHEADED?

In 2004, while in Fallujah, my son's platoon came upon an insurgent torture chamber.

This was where they took their kidnap victims.

They found a couple of Syrian men who had worked as simple cab drivers before being taken hostage. 

They were chained to the walls.  They had been starved and beaten.

The walls, floors, and ceilings of that horror house was DRENCHED in blood.

It was the very room where much of the beheadings and drilling into the skulls of victims had taken place.

But these idealistic women, surging into Iraq in 2004 to work for peace, seemed not to have been aware of such unpleasantries of daily life in Iraq.

They did, however, change their minds after one of them had been yanked out of her van, thrown to the ground, and robbed by one of those highway robbers this van-driver had feared.

In a later incident, Galleymore describes much celebration going on in Baghdad while they were there because it was the eve of Islam's holy Friday.  Partying and revelry in the streets, laughing people, music playing.

Then, in a jubilant manner, some of the citizens climbed up on their roofs and poked their heads out of the moonroof windows of their cars, and fired guns into the air.

She writes:


"Then a Humvee appeared, and a masked GI mounted behind a gun tower scanned the crowd.  the squad automatic weapons (SAW's or 'mini-machine guns') used in the vehicles can fire 725 rounds per minute.  A second Humvee followed, with a masked gunner who swiveled the weapon so that it menaced people on both sides of the street.

"Pedestrians drew together.  Passengers shooting through moon roofs slunk inside.  The festive music seemed to flatten, as if heralding the end of the party.

"I turned to a Swiss videographer in our group.  'I loathe this bullying, this show of force when frightened people forget for a moment that their country is shriveling before their eyes, this slap in the face by the strong-arm military!'

"He frowned.  'You don't know much about the psychology of war, do you?'"


Galleymore's companion was referring to the use of various techniques to subdue a populace in times of war.

And he--and she--both completely missed the point.

Oh for God's sake.

SHOW OF FORCE?

Two Humvees come out.

WHY did they come out?

Well...let's see now...THE COUNTRY WAS AT WAR AND THERE WAS A LARGE AMOUNT OF GUNFIRE COMING FROM AN AREA IN THE CITY.

Let's step back for a moment, shall we?

Let's look at it from a warrior's perspective.

What if the troops had said, "Awww, it's just some harmless celebrating.  Let's let 'em have some fun."?

And then, the insurgents used the cover fire as an excuse to open up on a crowded marketplace and slaughter dozens of innocents, which they have done before and are still doing with their suicide bombers?

This was not PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR.

THIS WAS PROTECTION.

(For one thing, those bullets fired into the air?  They come down AT THE SAME VELOCITY, which means, innocents were going to die that day because of morons.)

Anyway.  The army did not send a company, or a battalion, or even a PLATOON.

All they did was send one Humvee to investigate the gunfire, and one Humvee as backup.

The soldiers covered their faces to protect them from being recognized in other settings by insurgents who had freely infiltrated American military bases at that time, and had bombed several.

They swiveled their turrets because the gunner--whose job is one of the deadliest in the military--needed to see in a 360-degree range, to make sure that the gunfire was harmless and to get the morons to quit firing weapons that could get someone killed.

IT WAS NOT BULLYING.

If the army had wanted to bully those people, believe me, they could have done so.  They could have launched a full-force mission right into the midst of the people, hundreds of troops, dozens of armored vehicles.

But no.  They just sent a couple of Humvees to check and make sure everybody was all right.

THOSE MEN WERE STANDING BEHIND THE CASKET AT THE FUNERAL, PROTECTING THE MOURNERS.

Got it?

There are more incidents such as this related by Galleymore.   For instance, when she arrived on-base, she got out of the vehicle fully covered in a hijab--traditional Iraqi women's headgear--and approached an American soldier at the checkpoint from behind.

She told him of her presence and all, but he snapped at her to "get back in the vehicle, ma'am."

It wasn't until her third warning that she waved her American passport in front of his face, and his whole demeanor changed.

She likes to relay this story--I've heard her on the radio--as an indictment, an accusation.  He was rude to her--even mean--when he thought she was IRAQI, but when he learned she was AMERICAN, all of a sudden he was NICE.

I would like to point out to Ms. Galleymore that as of yesterday, two more female suicide bombers lit themselves up in crowded civilian venues, killing MORE THAN A HUNDRED INNOCENT IRAQI PEOPLE--which brings the total to more than EIGHTY female suicide bombers who have blown up mosques, collections of women and children religious pilgrims, and army checkpoints.

That soldier was trying to PROTECT the people who were entering that base as well as the people in the base buildings.  He did not know who she was and had not had a chance to call over a female soldier to search her for bombs.

Ms. Galleymore's accusations, and those of other peace activists, that American troops have been known to be brutal and have wreacked havoc on that country, are not without merit.

The military went into that country under false orders and false assumptions by their civilian leadership, and they conducted themselves with massive force for the first couple of years.  Innocent Iraqi lives were lost.

That is war.

I'm not excusing it.  I'm just stating it.

But over time, the military learned from its mistakes and underwent a massive overhaul in its own strategy and tactics, most of which took place AFTER Galleymore's visit.

My son's unit was the most highly-decorated unit, not just in the Marines, but in the ENTIRE U.S. MILITARY during the bloody Battle of Fallujah, and he tells me that his second deployment to the Anbar, which took place a month before the mosque in Samarra was bombed, was worse--way worse--than the first.

But by the time his unit was deploying for its fourth time in Iraq (he was already a civilian, but kept in touch with his buddies)--they spent the whole time BUILDING SCHOOLS and WORKING WITH THE SAME LOCAL PEOPLE WHO HAD KILLED MANY OF THEIR BROTHERS before.

My nephew Troy spent his whole 15 months in the Diyala province working closely with local tribal leaders, trying to help them rebuild their towns, working to bring water and sanitation and other needs into his area, mediating tribal feuds, searching for weapons caches. 

It was my nephew's troops who stood between the Shiite and Sunni populations of that province at that time, who were then trying to slaughter one another.

Had his troops not been there, many many more innnocents would have died.

THEY WERE PROTECTING THE MOURNERS.

And now, under the leadership of President Obama and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates as well as General Petraeus, the military is completely re-ordering their priorities.

For one thing, they've put out a call for more than 300 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS--college professor-types--to deploy with them into a region of Afghanistan or Iraq and explain local culture and customs.

More money is being poured into the State Department so that more diplomats, translators, and civilian management personnel can come into those countries and help the local populace--and the military--set up a functioning governing system.

And yes.

Combat troops.

Because SOMEBODY has to protect all those civilians and aid workers and peace activists from the bad guys.

SOMEBODY HAS TO STAND GUARD.

We can fight for peace on this planet with every fiber of our being--I know I do, whenever I can--but we don't have to do it AT THE EXPENSE of the fighting men and women who are over there doing the best they can in impossible situations.

Did some of them torture and do bad things?

Yes.  And a good many of them have been punished by the U.S. military.

Did some of them get away with doing bad things?

Unfortunately, yes.

Will it be harder, in coming years, for those same people to do bad things?

YES.  Much harder.

The military is a far more flexible organism than it gets credit for.

Is it flawed?

Absolutely.

Does it do bad things in the name of good?

Sometimes.

But does it also do a great deal of good as well?

Well...maybe we should ask the tsunami survivors of Indonesia where, a couple of years ago, massive amounts of food, shelter, and medical aid was dispatched to those places by the U.S. military.

This happens all the time.

We don't have to automatically assume that everything a military unit or soldier or Marine does in a warzone is somehow nefarious and to be suspected of ulterior motives.

In spite of the fact that most Iraqis are ready for us to go--and believe me, we're ready to leave--a majority of the people feel SAFE with the Americans there.  They feel PROTECTED.

We're doing all we can right now to train their OWN military to protect its OWN people so that we CAN leave.

And contrary to what many seem to think, I don't believe President Obama wants us to get bogged down in some Afghanistan/Vietnam situation.  He seems to be pulling together every sort of element he and his advisors can think of to eventually render U.S. military presence there obsolete.

He didn't invade that country, but he doesn't want to see little girls forced out of school and beaten in the streets again, either.  He's trying to find a way to improve on yet another impossible situation he inherited form Bush and Gang.

I just wish that peace activists, who believe so passionately in reaching out to other cultures and other backgrounds and other countries...would believe in doing the same thing with the U.S. military.

While Galleymore does write of the soldier's point of view, she emphasizes only those who have either (a)witnessed and/or taken part in some sort of war-crime activity or (b)been completely fucked over by the military when they tried to leave, were injured, or tried to get the disability or other benefits due them.

Did she make that stuff up?

No.  Of course not.  Bush left a horrific mess behind his precious military by ramming them into a war underprepared, understaffed, undermanned, underarmed, and unready.

They've been scrambling to catch up ever since.  And it's a mess.  I have written about it many times myself.

But this dividing of soldiers into two categories:

(a) monster or
(b) victim

really needs to stop if peace activists want to make any kind of progress.

People go into the military for many reasons--they want to serve their country, or there are no jobs or job security in their home areas, or they can't afford college without military help, or they come from proud military family traditions, or a combination of all that.

Maybe they just feel better, being the protectors, instead of the ones needing protection.

Galleymore loves her son with a depth, breadth, and height we all feel so passionately for our own sons and daughters.

But the message she traveled 8,000 miles to give her son worries me.

She wanted to tell him--and did tell him--

Don't do anything you will be ashamed of for the rest of your life.

Why would Galleymore assume that she had to travel to a warzone to tell this to her precious child?  Clearly she raised him in such a way that she never would have worried about such a thing otherwise.

The difference is:

The U.S. military.

Her son went into the military, and because so many peace activists don't understand anything about military life, teachings, or daily routine--she was suspicious.

She feared--as do so many in her shoes--that the army had the power to somehow brainwash her son into doing bad things he might never have done otherwise.

But this is simply not true.  You come out of the military pretty much the same you went in, and by that I mean, if you are a worthless bigoted THUG when you go in, then you will be one when you get out.

And if you are a man or woman of honor and grace going in, then nothing the military throws at you will change that inherent nature.

When my son was deployed, his dad and I scanned the Internet for Gettyimages photographs of his unit, and we kept seeing him in all those faces.

In one photo, which we printed up, a Marine in full combat gear was marching a prisoner down the street, hand on the back of the man's neck, who was zip-tied and bent over completely from the waist.  The Marine had a mean look on his face, but we thought he kinda maybe sorta looked like it coulda possibly been our son.

I'm not proud of that, by the way.

He came home, looked at the photo, and shook his head. 

"That's not me," he insisted, and added, "besides, that guy's abusing that prisoner, and that's something I would never do."

He told us about the time when, searching houses room by room, street by street in Fallujah, they came upon two young armed insurgents hiding.

"I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine," he described, "and he was utterly, completely terrified."  After a moment, he added, "I wonder if I looked the same to him."

Becoming a warrior does not automatically strip a man or a woman of their humanity.

If it did, they wouldn't suffer so much by the things they've seen, once they return to the peaceful world.

By automatically worrying that every soldier or Marine who goes to war is somehow a brainwashed, hate-filled, bigoted KILLING MACHINE is to degrade not just the uniform and the men and women who wear it so proudly, but our country.

We've made mistakes, and we're trying to fix them, as a country.  It's messy and sad and necessary.

But if we truly want peace, we must begin by taking as much time and trouble to understand the mind of the warrior as we do his victims.  We must reach out to those who have not only been victimized by their service in some way, but BENEFITED by it...grew stronger, came to know themselves better, widened their horizons, made friends for a lifetime, learned useful skills, assumed leadership roles for the first time in their lives, or came home to go to college.

I'm not saying we should ignore the horrendous problems that face our fighting men and women both in combat and afterward, or that we should not listen to those with horror stories to tell.  Far from it.  All I'm calling for is some BALANCE.

We should interview the double-amputee who trained so he could return with his unit to Iraq, as well as the one who was abandoned by indifferent bureaucrats back home.

And we should be damn grateful that, when we put our heads on our soft clean pillows at night, that somewhere, in some rainy dark night, our sons and daughters are standing watch.

Because then, and only then, can we ever find true peace for this world.