My sister's husband, Nathan, is in the AirForce and has twice been sent to Iraq. His career field is an unusually one. It's called Tactical Air Command Party or TACP and they go in on the ground with the Army to call in air-strikes. His tours have been shorter than many Army or Marine troops, but he was there from the beginning.
I have met many of the men in his squad and it never ceases to surprise me how different their experiences are from the stories told in the media. It's not that they don't worry about insurgents or road-side bombs, or that nothing disastrous ever occurs. It's just that they are far more competent than the media portrays them to be, and far more optimistic about their mission. One of the men my brother-in-law reports to always reminds him that "he has a chance to make history, so make it count."
"Making history" may sound foolishly idealistic to some, but to me it is an understanding that what is going on in Iraq is larger than the military objectives. The success of the war in Iraq cannot be measured minute by minute on Fox News or CNN. In our military history great victories often only came after great persistence and loss. The setbacks that we have encountered in Iraq are minor when compared with the loss of the Philippians to the Japanese in WWII, or the massively high number of casualties in the brutally trench warfare of WWI. I know, WWI and WWII were far more dangerous and grave than the war in Iraq, and we didn't attack first; but the point is, setbacks and casualties are part of war. Every man and woman lost in Iraq is a tragedy, but let us not dishonor their place in history by assuming that their sacrifices have not made a difference. They have made a tremendous difference. That is why the insurgents and the terrorist are striking back with such vigor.
Americans can be proud of what our service men and women are doing. The first time my brother-in-law returned from Iraq he told many stories about his experiences over there. One that I will never forget was about an Iraqi child. He described how a boy who looked about 12 years old showed him a deformed arm and repeated "Saddam, Saddam" as he pointed to where his elbow should have been. I can't imagine what would deform an arm like that, but it was very important to that young man that someone knew what had been done to him. The truth is that all of the problems in Iraq aren't the entire story. I'm not the first person to note that and hopefully I won't be the last. Our soldiers have put their lives on the line to do something better for another country in order to better their own. Two hundred years from now what many of us have done will be inconsequential. I don't envy the danger my brother-in-law has been in, but I do envy his opportunity to change history and I know he has done his best to "make it count."
