I hope you take time for the people fighting the war. You can show your support for them and still have a clear conscience if you oppose the war.
Follow me below the fold for links and stories from the brave men at the front.
If you like, you can send a care package. Use a site like anysoldier.com to send packages of love. Include something you made yourself, like a handkerchief or bandana, but not homemade food.
Here is a video that explains what to do.
If you like, you can help out our recently returned veterans. When I was a lurker here, the first post I ever ready by the great Steve Gilliard (r.i.p) was how to volunteer at military and veterans hospitals. You too can contribute a little time, and not feel one bit conflicted about your opposition. If you've got time to protest, you've got time to show a little love for the wounded. Especially if you happen to be unemployed. But if you don't have the time, as Steve said:
Volunteering with the sick is not an easy task. Donating cash or services is perfectly fine.
Disabled American Veterans has a great menu of things you can do from driving a van, volunteering at a hospital, helping out with legal issues or paperwork or other work.
For fellow attorneys out there, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE donate some time to the Military Pro Bono Project. Returning vets have many legal issues develop while they are downrange, and unfortunately it is very often divorce or landlord-tenant. The JAG Corps is swamped. Not only will you be doing a good deed earning chits with the Almighty, but it's a great way to comply with the 20 hours RPC rule.
Thank you for your attention. Semper Fi.
For those of you who enjoy war reporting, a great story in Stars and Stripes about how Spc. Burch Swigert, B Company, 1st. Batt, 32nd Infantry Regiment, USA, survived an IED blast in Afghanistan unscathed:
But just as the men of 1st Platoon turned onto yet another muddy path, a bomb buried near an orchard gate detonated next to Spc. Burch Swigert.
The blast shook the platoon ahead of Swigert’s position. An Afghan soldier swung his rocket-propelled grenade launcher around to fire before the Americans shouted him down.
The platoon ran back toward the boom, only to freeze as screaming Afghan soldiers pointed out a second, unexploded shell where the bomb went off. To add to the tension, the unit was in a dead zone. Their radios could not reach help at Combat Outpost Charkh and the rest of Company B, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment.
Amid the shouting, there he sat. Swigert was having a cigarette against that same orchard wall, shaken, but with everything intact.
"I love you, Swigert!" a soldier yelled as the lucky specialist got to his feet and moved down the path away from the blast site.
The bomb was made of 82 mm and 60 mm mortar shells. The larger shell blew up right next to Swigert as he walked by. But the 60 mm did not.
Despite its fearsome noise, the blast didn’t even knock the Helena, Mont., native off his feet.
"I was walking in front of the gate," Swigert said. "I heard a click and it went boom. First I thought my leg was gone, then I was like, ‘I’m still here.’
There is an excellent piece by C.J. Chivers published in the July issue of Esquire. He's out with an infantry unit in Afghanistan and asks the question "What is the United States military doing in Afghanistan?" but not in the usual pejorative, political pundity way. From the opening paragraph:
Uphill Company B moved through the darkness, step by step gaining elevation on an Afghan ridge. For the officers and soldiers equipped with GPS units and two-way tactical radios, which gave them access to information, the picture was clear enough. Company B, which calls itself Viper, was moving south, climbing a ridge that rose more than nine thousand feet above sea level and towered over the Korangal Valley, near the border with Pakistan. Its mission was to search for arms caches and insurgents and to harass the large but elusive forces that for three years have made the valley the scene of the bitterest infantry fighting in Afghanistan. And it was not alone. In the cold night air that had settled over the valley, beyond earshot, a pair of attack helicopters was flying in wide circles. Farther out, and higher, fixed-wing attack aircraft were on station. Soldiers call these assets, and in the event the soldiers found what they were looking for, either asset was ready to race to the ridgeline and help with the killing. They were also ready to help if things developed along the more typical course of events in Afghanistan — as in, if what Company B was looking for found it instead.