Friday November 19, 2004

Oy.

I said that, and I'm not even Jewish. I'm sure the semitic crowd will forgive my indiscretion. I was checking out an online page of the Wasthington Post that listed all of the U.S. servicemen killed between Nov. 11th and Nov. 15th in Iraq, and what really struck me was how young they were. I mean, most of them were younger than me. And I consider myself to be a relatively young person. Some of these guys were only 19 years old.

Thinking about how young they are boggles my mind. These are college-age kids dying over there. Little freshman. A year or two ago, they were probably getting anxious about their high school proms. Today their bodies are being shipped home in flag-draped coffins that the public will probably never see.

I wonder what it would have been like if I were shipped out some years ago, then a short time later sent home for my parents to bury. Or maybe it would have been my brother that died in Iraq. Or my sister. She's 19 right now. How would our family react if she came home in a coffin after spending a hellish year searching for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist? I don't think my parents could handle that. I don't know the other ones do.

To date, there are 1,217 American families of servicemen who are trying to do just that.