“Sometimes, right after a guy is killed, you feel as if you are in possession of a terrible secret. He’s there on the ground, alive only a minute ago, and the only people who know he’s dead are standing right there by him. The rest of the world still thinks he’s still alive, as alive as he was when he climbed out of bed that same morning, only a few hours before.

And at that moment, you think about how the word of his death will travel; how it will depart Iraq or Afghanistan and move across the ocean and into the United States and into the town where he lives, Corinth, Miss., say, or Benwood, W.Va., and into the houses and the hearts of the people who love him most in the world. And at that moment, standing there, looking down on the dead man, you can wonder only what the family will do when the terrible news finally arrives, how they will resist it and wrestle with it and suffer from it, and how they will cope and how they will remember.”  -Lost Soldiers. NY Times Magazine, 3/18/10.

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker on 5th street that said “Support the troops. Bring them home.” When I think about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I feel a range of emotions: anger, fatigue, apathy, motivation, etc. The emotion that I have been feeling today is one of loss. I have never had to experience someone I know closely die in combat. I guess this means my friends and family are lucky, because in the small town where I grew up it seemed that every other one us joined the military after high school.

Other families and other communities have not been so fortunate. Estimates of the people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the US invasion are in the hundreds of thousands. Whole families have been buried without even being counted, so we don’t even know how many of our brothers and sisters have died. This display shows a photo of each brother and sister who are American soldiers who have died during these two wars. So far. You can search your hometown or homestate and see if there have been any deaths from your community. It is sobering.

And I want to wish good health and peace of mind to my friends since childhood who have been involved with these wars through the military. Phillip H, Brandon, Chris R, Philip R, Mary Ann, Lisa, Joel, Daniel, Patrick, Jeffrey, Becky, Jordan, Pat, Chris F, and most of all, David.

Support the troops? Bring them home.