The War in Iraq has created a multitude of worries and concerns. What is it's cost going to do to our already suffering economy? What permanent losses of civil liberty are we going to suffer? What will be the long-term damage to our international reputation? What effect will the scism between anti-war and pro-war advocates have? To what extent are our actions in the Middle East going to promote the growth of terrorism? There are many more concerns, but there is one that, in the grand and global mess we're in, will be all to easy to overlook or ignore... the effect of the war on hundreds of thousands of our young American military people.

My four years of non-combat Navy service don't even begin to qualify me as knowlegeable about combat, and that will be true of most of you reading this. What we must understand is that most of our young people sent to fight in Iraq have had no more prior combat experience than us, and they, like most of those sent into previous wars, have been shoved into an experience that is completely alien, dangerous, baffling, and psychologically twisting, and that the experience is bound to affect most of those soldiers for the rest of their lives.

This is the fourth major war in my lifetime. Of those four, WWII is the odd one. Thanks to massive propaganda, WWII is considered a U.S. victory, and those returning from it were treated as heros and given liberal veterans benefits. Fifty plus years later, WWII is still celebrated, even to calling those of that time "the greatest generation". Those who fought in Korea, Viet Nam, and now Iraq, will get extremely short shrift by comparison... because they haven't been, and won't be, credited with "winning". That's a truth that makes me angry as hell, because the combat experiences in those latter wars have been at least as terrible as those suffered by soldiers in WWII.

We lost 295,000 Americans in WWII. Great Britain lost 452,000. The Soviet Union lost 13.6 million military and 7.7 million civilians. That we should call that a U.S. victory is sickening.

Do we even remember the Korean War? For a long time it was called the Korean "Conflict" because war wasn't decleared. Do we remember that the 50th anniversary has come and gone? The official commenmoration ended last September. Do we remember that 36,570 Americans lost their lives there in 1950-1953?

The first American lives were lost in Vietnam in 1959, and it wasn't over until the Paris Peace Accords were signed (on my 34th birthday) in 1973. The official American death toll is something over 58,000, but there are another 90,000+ that our government rates at 100% disabled from their time in the service and thousands more that are rated so disabled that they will never hold a job again. Still more thousands committed suicide as a result of their experiences, and aren't counted as casualties. Vietnam veterans were treated poorly on their return, because there was so much civilian hatred of the war.

As I write, 601 Americans have lost their lives in this Iraqi war, but untold thousands have been injured... untold because our government is trying hard to keep it untold. Worse, these injuries are some of the most disabling ever seen in wartime... loss of limbs, eyesight, hearing, and other serious head injuries.

The psychological damage to soldiers has always been serious. It's impossible to kill others and to watch friends being killed without being psychologically harmed. Many veterans simply won't talk about their experiences. Many have nightmares for the rest of their lives, while they fight to act normal to those around them.

War is far more than death and injuries. It's possible that those fighting in Iraq may suffer even worse psychological damage than did the Vietnam vets. The two wars are similar in one dramatic way... the resistance is coming from those the troops thought they were deployed to help. They're being forced to fight civilians who just want them out of their country. Yet another terrible aspect is that they're being forced to kill large numbers of non-combatants... including women and children. Many combatants, in the confusion of a complex war, will find themselves responsible for killing and injuring their fellows, in accidental friendly-fire incidents. Many coming home on furlough have just disappeared. The soldier morale is low and the suicide rate is alarmingly high.

The long-awaited Mental Health Advisory Team survey released a few days ago showed that unit morale is low-72 percent called it bad-and that suicide among U.S. troops in Iraq is high -- 35 percent higher than soldiers stationed elsewhere. And those numbers don’t include suicides that happened once soldiers returned home.

We should all try to "walk a mile in their boots"... try to comprehend what they're facing in Iraq. Most of them are just kids, but they're accumulating memories that they'll have to live with. How are we going to relate to them when they finally return? Will we tell them we opposed the war... and how will that make them feel? Will we tell them we're proud of what they did, when there is little chance that they'll feel proud?

Odds are, when this war does finally end, most of us will just want to forget it. Where will that leave those who can't forget it?

To most Americans, war is relatively abstract. It's always been easy to be a hawk when someone else is doing the fighting, and especially easy when the fighting is happening on someone elses turf. War is much more than a political decision... more than a debate about whether it's good for the nation, good for the world, good for peace, or good for the economy.

This war, more than the others in my memory, was obviously unjustified to anyone paying much attention, but it was supported by many who blindly trusted their government, and/or exercised a knee-jerk attitude of lashing out at somebody. Some have realized their error, but many are still ignoring facts and cheering on the distant slaughter, from their comfortable isolation thousands of miles from the action... shouting "support our troops", a slogan that has never been more thoughtless and meaningless than it is today.

For those troops, such support means little. Do the "supporters" understand what we're putting our young people through? This is no "normal" war pitting soldiers against soldiers. Our troops are being forced, by part of an invasion/occupation force, to attack and kill civilians, even children. They're trapped in a moral dilemma... not just kill or be killed, but kill people who aren't, in any reasonable sense, the enemy. It's a moral predicament that would drive anyone but a brainless, robotic killing machine to look for some escape.

Whether we support the war or not, we are responsible for the actions our government has taken in our name, and we're responsible for the damage to our own young people. The war was approved by those we elected, or by those we chose not to oppose. We sent our earnings to pay for this war, and many of us haven't even protested against the action. The very least we can do to "support our troops" is to TRY to imagine what it has been like for those we put in harms way. Let us take a little time and "walk a mile in their boots".