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Dear Soldier,
You don't know me but you have a lot of ideas about me. You think I'm anti-military, and maybe you think I'm anti-American. You've accused me of not supporting the troops and you've told me I don't appreciate the job you're doing. I want to introduce myself and maybe we can clear a few things up.
My dad was in the military. He went to Korea. I don't know a lot about it, I think he was a radio operator and was in pretty safe places, but I do know I saw the pictures of him, young, about the age you are now, in uniform and surrounded by a bunch of guys that look pretty much like you.
I'm a little to young to remember Vietnam in a very personal way, but I worked in a deli that was around the corner from a veteran's home. The guys that came in were good guys, if a little strange. They had a tendency to walk around the neighborhood in single file, looking straight ahead into the middle distance at something no one else could see, but no one I know disrespected them. I was in the deli one Veteran's day and one of these guys was talking about the war. He sort of snapped out of his monologue and apologized for his rambling. "No sweat," said the delivery guy. "It's good to talk to a vet on Veteran's day."
I spent a little time living in Israel. Everyone's a soldier there, doctors and accountants and artists and beekeepers and librarians and software developerseveryone has to serve. When you live in a place where everyone's been a soldier, you realize you can't make generalizations about the lives and hearts of the people in the military.
In college, I shared an apartment with a reserve member of the National Guard. I remember sitting out on the balcony in the sun with him, talking, when one of our neighbors stopped by and said, "Hey, look at the two of you! How is it a soldier and a hippie chick are sitting in the sun drinking beer together instead of going at each other's throats?"
My husband served too. He served in Europe, where he was born, and he continues to work for the military in his country. He's got some pretty nice friends that still wear the uniform; I've met more than a few of them. One of them cooked us a beautiful gourmet dinner and the other always asks for weird new age books from the United States.
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I mention all of this because I want you to know that I don't have a whole lot of generalizations about who you are and how you think because you're a soldier. And I wonder if you might consider taking a look at me, a protestor against the war, with a broader view.
I get that you're doing the job you signed up to do. I get that you are proud to serve your country. I get that you are doing many things of great difficulty, from being away from your home and family, to firing weapons at actual human beings, because you're meant to be making the world a better place for me to live in. I get all that.
So maybe you could consider that I'm doing my job too. I'm voicing the dissent that is an American right. I'm asking my government to convince me that war is the right thing to do. I'm pleading with those in power to recognize that we are not alone in the world. My vote placed a representative in office and when I protest against government policies, I'm am reminding him to do his job and represent me.
I don't support the war. Each day it looks more and more like imperialism. Each day the pretense looks more and more flimsy. And each day, talk of deals the government has made regarding the spoils of the war make me more and more suspicious. Every day that the war continues is a day in which you might die, and I don't want that. I want to see you on the five o'clock news when the troop ship unloads back home, surrounded by your family, as they wipe away their tears and tell the camera how proud they are of you and how happy they are that you're back home.
I hope I've cleared up some of the misunderstanding around how I feel about you. And I hope that when you're watching the evening news and you see me protesting, you don't immediately think I'm against you. I'm the one with the No War sign, but Im also the one tying yellow ribbons. Look for me.
My protest is not against you. Please believe me. I, too, am proud to serve my country by openly participating in democracy. We're supposed to be a nation that can support a whole melting pot of ethnicity, religions, and ideology. That's something worth fighting for.
Wishing you a swift and safe return home,
PM-Seattle, WA
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