Marine Who?

Picture a Marine or soldier returning to the United States after a year-long deployment in Iraq. It might be his first or second tour, but more than likely, at this stage of the war, it's his third trip to battle. He's relieved to be out of a country whose capital suffers from a violence that suffocates the Iraqi hope for a peaceful existence. That American warrior returns home where he can walk down a street and not worry about a suicide bomber unleashing death on the innocent. But that same defender of American ideals also returns to a country where interest in Iraq, that land stained with the blood of his brother-in-arms, is barely discernable.

Men and women of different nationalities die daily in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Americans no longer want to be bothered by a war that refuses to behave predictably as they prefer. It hasn't gone well. We've been there too long. The Iraqis don't like us anymore.

A country whose beacon of democracy has illuminated us through the darkness of our Civil War and subsequent wars has decided that the discomfort and sacrifice of this battle is too much to bear. The soaring support for removing Saddam as a threat in 2003 has dwindled to a barely audible squeak. It is apathy that greets the soldiers and Marines, not the jubilant cheers that should announce the return of our warriors.

How are we going to win this war or any war with that attitude? How is that attitude going to keep our nation safe, and what are those people going to say when in a year the insurgents are again attacking our cities? Maybe then they will wish they had invested more into this war on terror. Maybe then they will wish they had considered the commitment and honor that propels our military -- and shown gratitude for it.

I just hope they aren't deep in those thoughts as they sift through the rubble that was once their home, courtesy of the insurgents, those Islamic extremists who won't stop until they destroy us or we destroy them. They're serious. Why aren't we?