Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 19, 1991 TAG: 9102190401
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The truth was that, at 13, I didn't know a single person in Vietnam.
Today I'm struggling. I've learned the Middle East situation isn't just a conflict in itself, but a source of conflict within most of us. The heart and mind of many Americans are at battle with one other.
I thought I'd have been one of the first to organize peace rallies, to carry signs with anti-Bush slogans before the paint had dried. Yet, riveted to my television, I root at images of our fighter pilots destroying enemy targets. When CNN's Bernard Shaw crawled on his belly in some Baghdad hotel, I was thrilled when he stuck the telephone outside the window so I can actually hear what's going on.
Yeah! Get those damned Scuds! Scuds? How can a word that have never been even remotely part of my daily vocabulary now be so routine?
But war is horrible, right? I'm against war . . . am I not? Isn't everybody? My mind keeps telling me that all this is horribly wrong. But my heart won't leave the troops.
Ed Shamy wrote a column awhile ago, just before the United States struck Baghdad, about the sad symbolism of those now bedraggled yellow ribbons. "We need to do more. We need more than ribbons."
It's too late to do much more than tie a yellow ribbon. We let this war happen by - passively, and quite naively - sitting by and just plain letting it. To me those yellow ribbons signify that united we stand, divided we fall. Vietnam is certainly evidence of that.
As much as we deplore missiles, gunfire and casualties, we must support the troops in the gulf, no matter what sort of inner conflict that means.
How naive we've all become. It's time we woke up and smelled the chemical warfare. My little sister Julie, the single most precious person in my life, is now 20 and in the Navy. When she was 16 she saw "Top Gun" and made a career decision. I am so proud of her, but these days I'm kicking myself.
Did Julie ever see "Platoon"? Did she ever see "Full Metal Jacket"? Did she have any conception whatsoever of what she was getting into? Did most of the servicepeople now stationed there really think this would happen when they enlisted?
"No blood for oil," the protesters shout. But I can't stop thinking about Nabil, a Kuwati petroleum engineering student I knew in college. I hadn't thought of Nabil in years. What's become of him? Of his family? Of his freedom? It's not just about oil. There are very real people involved.
It makes me sick to see Americans across the nation burning the American flag, and yet I'm proud to live in a country that allows for such freedom of expression.
The dichotomies are never-ending.
Most of my life treasures fit in the palm of my hand. There's a tiny piece of the crumbled Berlin Wall given to me by a former East Ger- I thought I'd have been one of the first to organize peace rallies, to carry signs with anti-Bush slogans. Yet I root at images of our pilots destroying enemy targets. man student after her first visit to the United States. A bottle cap that was in my hand when someone very special once timidly reached out to hold my hand for the first time. But most of all, there's a tattered, dirty, war-worn patch from a Marine Corps flight uniform.
I earned that patch several years ago when the United States set out to obliterate Libya. It belonged to my high-school sweetheart, a Marine pilot involved in that operation. I hadn't heard from him in years, but one day out of nowhere, he wrote.
He was scared to death and didn't know whom to talk to. He was, after all, a Marine. He didn't want to alarm his wife or his family by admitting his great fear, and I became the outlet for that. For six months, we wrote most every day. I baked cookies, and even doctored newspaper pictures of Gadhafy by blacking out his teeth.
Six months later, I received an envelope containing the patch from his uniform and a piece of paper with just one word on it: "Thanks." That one word spoke volumes. I learned I was able to contribute more to peace by helping one man than I ever could have by carrying a sign.
I did not hear from him again for years. Then, six weeks ago, I learned he was in Saudi Arabia, sleeping on a piece of plywood in a bunker near the Iraqi border. Neither I nor his family has heard from him since.
The irony is that I had stopped seeing him because I didn't believe in what he was going to do with his life. Sadly, I discovered that over the years he didn't necessarily believe in what he was doing with his life either. But he had to learn that the hardest way of all.
I stopped at a machine outside of a closed Super X drugstore to pick up a morning newspaper. Just inside the door was a brigade of shopping carts, each festooned with an elaborate yellow ribbon. Somehow that sight made the daily news, and even the word "Scud," just a little more palatable.
Let's not give up on those yellow ribbons yet. Write those "any serviceman" letters. Pray for peace, but don't protest for it to the detriment of the morale of those overseas. Let the troops - by definition a group of people, of individuals - know that we're behind them. That we understand their fears and inner conflict.
Because we're experiencing some of it ourselves.
by CNB