I was reading about a young Marine who is from my home town in Georgia.  I didn’t know the name. His was just one more in a gruesome line of obituaries titled something like “Honoring Fallen Heroes”.  But this one stuck with me. I wondered about young Brian. 

In some ways, without my even knowing him, I suspected he was a lot like my 18-year-old self.  Fresh out of high school.  All brash and righteous and passionate about defending the world.  In my case, against the “communist threat” in Viet Nam.  In his, against the “terrorist threat” in the Middle East.  “We’ve got to stop them over there or we’ll be fighting them on the shores of California”, I had said.  “My country, right or wrong!”, I had said.  Did he feel the same way? Same words, different time. I didn’t know how much we had in common in our civilian lives, but we had a lot in common in our military lives.  We were both Marines and that means something.  At least, in that moment it did to me.

In the beginning, no doubt, there was that intoxicating sense of immortality that comes with the uniform and tradition.  Before he died in the blast of a roadside bomb, I wonder if he questioned his reason for wanting to go there in the first place. Did he wonder how crazy it is to want to experience the smell of gunpowder and smoldering bodies?  I’m sure that, before he got there, he never imagined the ghostly terror one feels when a bullet travels so close to your head that you hear the whoosh and wonder “What if…”!  Again and again.  But I’m also sure that he learned that terror.  I doubt, before he got there, that it ever occurred to this young boy what it would feel like to experience the gut-wrenching sadness that washes over you when you see the broken body of a child, or the vacant anger from the eyes of a complete stranger whose father or mother or children have been blown apart in front of them.  And some part of them blames you.  It’s a tough load for a teenager to bear.

Yeah, the advertisements and political talking heads paint a Hemingway-esque picture of the nobility of freeing people from suffering and giving birth to new opportunities of self determination.  The broad strokes of propaganda are compelling and suitable for the endless dribble that makes up political discourse these days.  But the details, oh my, those details.   

So far there have been almost 2500 people like my young anonymous friend from back home. Youngsters, mothers, fathers, sons & daughters are paying the ultimate price for something.  And thousands more who escaped the ultimate price will now spend the rest of their lives with the rewards of their survival – lost limbs, broken bodies, nightmares.  Regardless of your political views of the war, there’s no denying that it demands a devastating toll.  Whether we are right or wrong in our waging of it, the price is no less brutal. 

I’ve spoken with some of those Iraq veterans. An enlisted man who was parachuted into the freezing plains of Northern Iraq in the initial invasion; National Guardsmen (actually they were women) who thought they were going to be driving trucks but learned that everyone is first and foremost a fighting soldier; an officer who was tasked with the impossible feat of securing some piece of real estate in Baghdad.   And while they had differing degrees of enthusiasm for the war itself, they shared a common ideal – honor.  And what are they honoring? Some are honoring their fellow soldiers, others are honoring their mission, others honor their patriotism, the USA.  However you say it, these men and women are fighting for something that they believe in, and however you slice it, at least a part of what they are fighting for is us.  That’s right, you and me.

And so I wonder - Are we worthy?  Do we do anything with our lives that is grand enough, compassionate enough, divine enough to justify others having to endure such horrific circumstances on our behalf?  Is our daily life so much more important than the lives of those families and children and soldiers that are ravaged by war?  Why do any of us deserve such sacrifice?  Is what we spend our minutes and hours on so necessary that a young boy should have to die for it in a foreign land?  What is so damned wonderful about our day to day existence that we somehow think it’s a good idea to force other people to live the way we do? I’m not talking about the ideals of freedom and democracy here.  I’m talking about how we express those ideals.  How much of our day, week or month is engaged in something that would be worth another person dying for?  If we can’t answer that without getting defensive, if we can’t look ourselves in the mirror and speak with a straight face, well, we have the answer don’t we? 

I may not be able to impact the course of military events, or foreign policy or political double-talk.  But maybe I can do something to make my life one of those worth dying for?  It’s a daunting and sobering thought. It will definitely take something. But not as much as young Brian paid.  Not even close to that.