When the War on Terror began in Afghanistan my mother began a campaign where she collected nonperishable food, things like M&M's, Oreo's, to send to the troops as a way to liven their spirits and as a way of showing them support. That lead directly to e-mail conversations with servicemen and eventually lead to a discussion with a young Marine Sergeant. When the war shifted from Eurasia to Eastasia, I mean from Afghanistan to Iraq, the conversations with the young Marine Sergeant continued. Today is that young Sergeant's 28th birthday.

In another time and in another place Arthur and I could have been friends. We might have played baseball together. Our mother's may have shared maternity wards. We might even yet have the chance to sit down and have a beer. Who knows maybe we'll still have a chance to. As most of you know, I'm as against the military-industrial complex as anyone you'll ever meet but I do recognize the human element to it.

I never gave my position much of a thought until the other night. I was asked to send an e-mail to Arthur (the young Sergeant) and initially I was uncomfortable about the idea. Emailing a complete stranger, especially one as ideologically disparate as you can get, seemed like nothing I wanted to do. But while walking back from lunch with a coworker I watched an old man chastise a young kid for trying to register voters by using the premise of defeating Bush. The old man, who even at a quick glance stunk of a tourist who's come to "The Cities" from the farm and hasn't seen a more than 2 stop lights in the last 30 years, seemed to believe that dissent somehow equaled a hatred of all things American, an idea cultivated by watching too much Fox News, and that the simple, patriotic act of registering voters to vote against a candidate was somehow too much for this farmer to take. It occurred to me last night that here was an instance where there was a stranger with a different political persuasion than my own and there was no way I would even manage to be decent to him, let alone do anything else. And yet there are people like Arthur who is willing to die for strangers, regardless of their opinions of him and his men simply because someone tells him to.

It simply shames me to think that someone is willing to die at my expense, whether or not the idea behind why they're dying makes any sense to anyone. I may hate the system, and the reasons he's there, but I can't deny any respect that I have for him and his men. Right now he's in the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison part of the company of Marines brought in to restore order out of the chaos that arose. Right now he's living in a place where a kid with a pipe bomb strapped to his chest may be coming for him, a place where an insurgent with a pistol might be waiting around a corner, all because he's associated with an occupying force. I may be a coward, I've never been tested, but I do know that I could never deal with the stress of knowing that there were people around me who wanted to kill me if they only had half a chance.

To paraphrase Lennon, All we're saying is give this guy a chance. So regardless of your opinion of the war on Iraq, regardless of your stance on American foreign policy, regardless of your political or ideological affiliations, I'm asking you to send this guy an e-mail wishing him a Happy Birthday.

Today is his birthday. He's 3 days younger than me. And he's willing to risk his life for you, a stranger, over things too complicated to fully understand, for reasons beyond a Constitution or a flag or a hunk of rock situated between two puddles of water on a spinning rock circling a fiery ball of gas at 93 million miles. I've already sent him a birthday greeting, if you want to as well mention that Dottie Pratt told you it was his birthday since she's the one emailing him all the time. His e-mail is arthur_parra @OBVIOUSLYREMOVETHISyahoo DOT com.