Two Worlds: Military and Civilian

My life can be sharply divided into two halves: the part that happened before 2002 and the part that came during and after that year. Like that of many other Americans, my world changed on 9/11.

In the "before" part, I worked in quasitechnical positions, bridging the gap between secretarial work and technology in different jobs. When I wasn't working, I was raising three boys by myself while trying to write novels - bad ones, alas. Then two buildings in New York City were hit by a couple of airplanes. I didn't know it, but my world was going to be transformed.

My boyfriend, motivated to do something about the vicious attack on the country we love, joined the Navy in August 2002, and became my fiance by October. In July 2003, we were married.

My brother, who is in the National Guard, was activated for Afghanistan, and left in January 2006. Like my husband, he'd wanted to go and make a difference for years. Now he has a chance. He's already won a bronze star and a purple heart; I'm hoping now that he remains unheroic until he comes home.

My oldest son, who is probably more like me than anyone in the world, is joining the Marines as of September 2007. He wanted to have a future that would bring him respect from himself and others, and like my husband and brother is very patriotic. He's doing surprisingly well for a geeky couch-potato with migraines who played sick to avoid gym class.

And now I've gotten the news that one of my brother's fellow guardsmen was killed last week in a firefight with the Taliban. Already my brother has seen more action than any of the family ever thought he would. He's been wounded, his best friend had his feet blown up by an IED. I have to admit to myself that he could die.

This is my world today -- three blue stars on my banner, living five thousand miles away from where I grew up, being a military wife.

Here's what bothers me. I cannot ignore this war. I also cannot condemn it; the people who we are fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan could never be our friends; they hate us because of our success, because we don't believe the way they do, because our beliefs are the opposite of theirs. They came to our country and tried to destroy our morale. They are still killing people in America and Britain and Denmark and Sweden and France. We don't hear a lot about it, but there it is.

If we go home from Iraq and Afghanistan, they won't stop fighting us. They attacked us without provocation: in Saudi Arabia, off the coast of Oman, in New York City, in California, all over Europe. There is nothing we can do that will convince them not to kill us. That puts my children in danger, all of them. It puts your children in danger as well.

All this is in my face every single day. I wish I could believe otherwise. I wish we had a way out of this without fighting for our survival. We don't.

In contrast, most people can mostly ignore the war. Most don't have family in the military. Even if they do have family in the military, most military members seeing active ground combat right now are Army or Marine; there are less than a million Army members, fewer than 200,000 Marines total. I don't have statistics, but I'd bet that fewer than 15% of Americans are being even indirectly impacted by this war due to a close family member seeing action.

It's easy to protest a war when you don't have family members coming back and telling you what it's really like. It's easy to pretend the military are the victims of an overactive war-hawkish Republican regime when you don't look into the piercing blue eyes of your 6-foot-plus brother and realize that you don't dare call him a victim.

I don't think I can change the minds of those who are adamantly against the war. I would ask, though, that you question why you are against it. Have you read the writings of journalist Kevin Sites (In the Hot Zone), who spent more than a year visiting different wars around the world? Have you swallowed your bile and gone out to visit hawkish blogs like Little Green Footballs? With a couple of exceptions, I've never read an active-duty military blogger who was adamantly opposed to the war; the closest they get is questioning why we went to war. Never do they state we should abandon the work we have already done.

I guess what I'm saying is, step into my world for a while. You probably don't have a son or brother in the line of fire. Most of you, God willing, will never have that worry. But do you wonder why I'm pro-war, even though the three men I love most in the world are at such risk? It's not because I'm stupid, or misguided, or a poor victim of an evil regime. It's because I think we need to fight an evil that's been festering in our world for a while, and that is now starting to seep into our very heartland. Because I think if we don't fight it now, we will be forced to fight it later, and at much greater loss.

Anyway, you can, and should, get the perspective from the other side by listening, just for a little while, to the voices on the other side.

I promise, I listen to you. I may not agree, but I listen.