Welcome home from Iraq,

[rholland]

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Copyright 2007 by Tom Miller

I also was present in October 2006 when my son returned from Iraq along with members of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The Event Center at Ft. Carson, Colo., was jammed with hundreds of happy family, friends, and well-wishers. Kids held up colorful signs welcoming their dads home. Anxious wives checked their makeup, and parents fought back tears.

There was an unofficial honor guard of vets - mostly Vietnam-era who themselves had come home not to parades and celebrations, but as pariahs. They were there to help ensure that these returning heroes were honored for their service and sacrifice. For a day, at least.

There were tears of joy (and surely relief), but mostly there were the kind of smiles usually reserved for toothpaste commercials.

Forgotten for a moment were the long days and longer nights of separation . . . the ever-present danger . . . the anguish over lost and wounded comrades . . . the unknown challenges of coming home that still lay in the future.

Over the next few months, these men and women - and their families - would try to pick up their lives again. Some, their enlistment up, would leave the Army. Others would move on to other assignments and posts. Many would remain with the brigade while it reset and began training for its next deployment.

Later this month - barely a year since their last homecoming - the 3 BCT, 4th I.D. leaves again for Iraq. This time for fifteen months. For 3500 fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, that means not one but two Christmases away. Ditto for their long-suffering families at home.

What do we owe these people? Respect, honor, and support at a minimum. And, not the banal and too-often disingenuous "I support the troops."

Respect means that politicians and the media should not use the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to advance their ideological and partisan agendas. It means that the media will be objective, balanced, and fair in its coverage of them and their mission.

The barely-disguised glee and rush-to-judgment of much of the elite media's coverage of the alleged atrocity at Haditha is symptomatic of much of the coverage of this war.

Respect means that Hollywood make honest films about the military, not one-sided polemics like the recent "Into the Valley of Elah" that cast all combat vets as emotional cripples, if not psychotic killers.

Ours is an all-volunteer Army today, but don't fool yourself that they're mercenaries. They don't just serve for the pay, benefits, and work experience. Believe me, it's not nearly enough to compensate for the hardships and dangers they face. Many are deeply patriotic.

If they come to suspect that their service is not honored, as some already do, will they continue to make that sacrifice? If not, what will happen if your children or grandchildren need them in the future . . . And they're not there?

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