"The first rule of war is that young men die"

This is my first serious post on this blog. The Iraq War hits hard every day. Last month it cost us the nephew of the author of the words below. I asked the author's permission to be able to post his words. He asked that he and his nephew remain anonymous. I have gladly honored that request. As you read it, think of someone you know that could be lost in W's War. Support the troops by praying that choices that can bring peace start to be made soon.

The Iraq War suddenly became very personal this week. On Friday we learned that our nephew, ____________, was killed while on patrol thousands of miles away from his wife and family. It's a story as old as war itself, though the news now comes to uncles and aunts via Microsoft Outlook rather than Western Union or Ma Bell. It's a story shared by 2,500 other American families, from Hawaii to Maine, not to mention the thousands whose memories are still raw from wars fought generations ago. And it is, of course, a story of loss that spans continents, linking mourners from Birmingham, Alabama, to Birmingham, England, to Baghdad, and beyond.

________ was not always our nephew. He entered our lives when he was about four years old, when his mother married my wife's brother. The awkwardness that often follows the blending of families was never there with _______ or his brother. At every meeting, they would rush to hug us, unconcerned with such trivial matters as bloodlines or shared histories. They insisted that we were family and so we were.

I would like to say that we were always close, but we were generally separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles, and it was rare that we saw each other more than once a year. Even when we briefly lived in the same city, our get-togethers were all too infrequent. We were usually busy, and so were they, and there was no sense of immediacy because everyone was so young. Time, we assumed, was on our side, and our relationship often consisted mainly of exchanging Christmas and birthday gifts, and thank you notes.

When we heard that ______ had joined the Army, we were apprehensive, but we also understood. It would be a good opportunity for him, a chance to find direction in his life, acquire some valuable skills, and perhaps get some money together for college. When we learned that he was going to Iraq, our apprehension only increased, but we knew—or thought we knew—that the odds were still very much in his favor. We were invited to his graduation from basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, a drive of only a few hours, but other obligations prevented us from attending. I no longer remember what those obligations were, and I wish now that we had been there, because, while we were, at best, ambivalent about the Iraq War, we were never ambivalent about ______.

Though it is a word that is commonly tossed around in these situations, I refuse to think of _______ as a hero because I believe that the term trivializes his life. Heroes are plaster saints, nameless, faceless, and interchangeable. ______ was none of those things. He was an authentic, good-hearted, flesh-and-blood person, with most the virtues and a few of the vices inherent in our shared humanity. He joined the U.S. military for the same variety of reasons that young men have been doing so since the days of Lexington and Concord. I am certain that he took pride in serving his country, but I don't imagine he ever regarded his choice as an act of heroism.

There will be time later to sort out the politics of the War and its causes and consequences. But for us, that time is not now. At the moment, the speeches of politicians on both sides of the debate sound tinny and self-serving. The words of a thousand commentators and pundits seem obtuse and irrelevant. It is no longer possible to think of the war in abstract terms.

Instead, now is the time to remember a smiling, happy little blond boy who invited us into his family with a generosity of spirit almost unknown in the adult world. That, too, was an act of heroism. And for now, at least, it is the thing that matters most.