We Support You

   When you’re in Iraq, mail becomes paramount.

   No longer do you grab the stuff in your mailbox with the monotony that consumes after years and years of junk mail and coupons you’ll never use. The walk to the mailbox is not a mechanical part of your day anymore. No more is your mail a constant trickle of companies reminding you that you owe them money. Mail becomes a miniature Christmas, a small token or package or gift from a magical land far away that now seems kind of fuzzy in your memory like Santa and his reindeer through the glass of a child’s globe which has just been shaken and presents you with a snowy winter-scape. A quickening of the spirit occurs when you receive a letter or package from your friends and family back in the United States. It must feel like a man receiving a message in a bottle after being shipwrecked on an island for years. This simile may be a stretch, but you get my drift.

    Whether you are a true patriot, and you bleed red, white, and blue, or you are simply here because duty came knocking at your door, and you have some honor and some pride in what you do, it feels really good to receive thoughts and prayers from all of you back home.

   You may be cooking one of us some home-made brownies this morning in a snug little town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, as you sip your Colombian coffee and enjoy watching the fog rise up off the slopes through your window, thinking about your son or daughter who is deployed in the Middle East.

   You may send a photo of yourself snowboarding at The Canyons in Park City, Utah, and write “I missed you on the lift tonight,” or some other inside joke in black marker right across the mountainous scene in the background to your friend in Iraq.

   You may be retired. You may be a veteran. You may have been sitting in your living room just today writing a letter of appreciation on your favorite stationary and licking the seal and sending it to one of your grandchildren over here.  

   You may be a guy in Detroit who recently sent one of my Sergeants some new boots and a carton of smokes. He signed up on www.operationac.com to “sponsor” a soldier deployed overseas.

   You may be a child, writing a letter in first period to a soldier from your hometown. We love the flags that you draw us in crayon or magic marker, coloring so carefully inside the lines. And we enjoy the intelligent letters you send us, wondering what it is like over here and if we are scared.

   Whoever you are, and regardless of your political interests, or your feelings about the military or war or violence or our Commander in Chief, or Iraq, or Muslims, or the current stock market trends, we appreciate your support. Regardless of your favorite color, your skin color, the type of car you drive, your age, the college you went to, your lack of education, or your bad attitude towards teenagers and video games, we still thank you.

   Because we are you. We are the American people, temporarily displaced for a spell in the Middle East. We exemplify virtually every race, class, profession, and opinion that you do over there across the pond. We’re just fighting right now, that’s all. We've been pulled away from “normal” life to serve our country as millions have done for America in past conflicts. Some of us believe in the political machines that nudge entire nations into war, and some of us just believe in ourselves and each other and doing the duty we raised our hand and swore to do.

     Few know what fate waited for us behind that oath, but it took a special kind of person to make it either way.

      We love our country with its high desert and thick forests, and coffee shops and bars and churches and fairs and malls and movie theaters and racetracks and bookstores and libraries and universities and quiet suburbia - a cul-de-sac street-lamp paradise, and football and Lollapalooza and children going down slides at countless parks and  tattoo parlors and motorbikes and radio stations and cell phones and Thanksgiving and days off and fast food and sensible salads and backwoods and small towns and big city lights and Montana and Utah and New Orleans and Pennsylvania and the mid-west and the southwest and the pacific coast and the Great Lakes and A Prairie home Companion and Seattle and Texas and New York and watching our children take their first step, or hearing them say their first word, and shopping at Wal-Mart and Best Buy and Barnes and Noble and Starbucks Coffee and driving down winding roads, and our car stereos, and Barbecues and beer and our comfortable beds and the hugs of those we love and the spontaneous smiles of those we miss and believe me I could go on and on. We listen to a lot of music over here and that music becomes the soundtrack of our lives. Country music, religious music, soft rock, heavy metal, rap, classic rock - we listen to it all, and it inspires.

   You see – we don’t ever forget. In fact, all we do is work over here, and remember.  So please, don’t let the media fool you. We are not the targets of the insurgency. YOU ARE. When the mass media shows you all the bad things that happen over here, the insurgents cheer. For they know they can never beat us. That’s why they fight us the way they do. They are scared as hell, and they should be. This insurgency can never, ever defeat the American military.

   But they can beat our hearts, they can cut of our inspiration, and they can do it through your TVs and your newspapers and your internet. For they know how embedded the media is in our society. They know that if we lose the support of the American public, we lose faith in ourselves. If the mass media had the inclination or the ability to show you all the good work we are doing over here, they would have 24 hour continuous coverage, 365 days a year, not American death toll statistics and instances of violence shown between recent Hollywood divorces and the latest headlines. To a news channel, what makes better news, suicide bombers or the re-opening of a school in a small village that you will never even think about visiting? And what does the mass media really strive for, compassion or ratings? You decide.

   If we, the Soldiers and Marines and Airmen and Sailors and men and women of the United States Armed Forces lose your support, then the work we do will truly be in vain. Our inspiration will be dried up, our energy usurped.

   If you are too proud to act patriotic and you feel like a hypocrite, then fake it. Do it anyway.  Do it for us. Because like I said before, we are you. When you see us on TV, you’re looking in the mirror. We are your sons and daughters and moms and dads and friends and neighbors. None of us could have known we would be in an ancient Holy Land in the year 2005, fighting a type of war that has never come before.

   So don’t cry for us, America, just pray for us. Don’t worry, we know how to fight and protect ourselves. Just keep the light on for us, keep the house warm in the winter, wrap the pipes, offer us your support, look after our children, keep yourselves safe as you can until we return, and know that we stare up at the sky often and recall what it’s like to be home.

   Don’t question our reasons for raising a hand a saying, “I do solemnly swear...” Just give us the benefit of the doubt. We’re doing the best we can, and knowing you’re behind us means a lot.

      So Thank You, American people, for your continued support. Keep the care packages coming, and the brownies cooking. Send those letters. Take those pictures. Have the kids at school make banners. And if you’re someone who doesn’t know a soldier first hand, sponsor one. Take care of yourselves because it’s a dangerous world. We worry about you.

      We’ll be back very soon to savor the American lifestyle once again.                 

      And remember – no matter what happens, or where they send us -

      WE WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT YOU.