Hal (a friend and frequent commenter on this blog) shared something with me and gave me his kind permission to post it here.  We've been discussing the war in the comments section of a recent post over the past few days and Hal offered this personal perspective on the war:

" I thought I'd mention that as we've been debating the last few days on the blog a very real story was playing out at our house.  Jill's brother (James) is deploying next week with Navy SEAL Team-3 for 7-months in Iraq.  Yesterday was his family's farewell party held at our house.  A very strange and surreal experience I've never had prior, sending a family member off to war.  When he finally had to leave there was not a dry eye in the house.

Of course as I'm sure you'd imagine, politics was definitely a subject of discussion yesterday.  James has been against this war since well before it started.  He has always been critical of Bush and clearly believes we have no business being there.  Yet, here he goes off to fight in a war he clearly does not believe in.  As he puts it, he's just doing his job.  He's a 14-year Navy veteran and is a Chief with SEAL Team-3 (if you're not familiar with Navy SEAL's, they definitely will be in combat situations).  At this point he wants to make his 20-years and get out with full retirement benefits.  He's only 32 years old.

Being against the war is something we all agreed upon on that blog thread yesterday (we only disagreed on how to end it).  Can you imagine being James right now? 

I can't imagine being James as he goes off to do his job, to fight in a war out of loyalty and duty to his country, putting aside his personal politics to fulfill a greater role.  Hal's story sobered me.  It reminded me that the political discussions we often have here--lively, spirited, engaging and challenging--all of them have human faces to them, real consequences.

God bless, James (and all of your fellow soldiers out there).

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