InSpiritry

“He was certainly a hero…

 He did have some difficulty dealing with it,”

Jean Offutt, a Fort Bliss spokesperson

News came today that we lost another hero, not on a bloody battlefield in Iraq, although he had served there, but instead back home in Texas where he should have been safe. No, after all he had been through, it was not gunfire or an IED or even friendly fire that killed former Army Spc. Joseph Dwyer. Instead, he died late last month of a drug overdose. Dwyer’s friends say he, like thousands of other veterans, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. (more…)

Peace and Love! Peace and Love! Peace and Love!

Ringo Starr

For some of us, these words are a familiar slogan from the 1960s. For others they are exactly the message the world needs to hear. For a few, Peace and Love is a tired cliche’. Whatever your first impression is, these simple words speak of what so many of us hope for in our lives: safety, harmony, nonviolence, compassion and acceptance. Peace. Our religions seek to instill it, our governments try to provide it, our politicians orate about it…and still is seems like a distant dream. (more…)

On a rainy afternoon this week, as I worked at my desk, I got the phone call I had been dreading for months: 

 ”Anne, it’s me. I thought I better call. I am leaving tonight for Iraq.”

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Today, six years post 9-11, there are stories to be told.

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A convoy of American soldiers rolls into town, again. They have shelled the buildings where insurgents may be hiding. Now they will go through neighborhoods, searching house to house, guns ready, kicking in doors, hoping no one is inside. They have lost dozens of buddies to the fighting. They are terrified. Sometimes their fight returns to the streets where everyone looks like an enemy and every package an IED. Their commander reminds them that their aim is to “make Iraq safe for democracy” and to “free the Iraqi people.”

These young men are certainly facing death every day, but what about the Iraqi people who lived in those towns and houses, the citizens who did not start this war? (more…)