Soldier's sacrifice, D.C. trip bring the war home

On a recent flight from Washington, D.C., to Denver, a young man seated in my row leaned over and blurted out, "This is the first time I've ever been on a commercial airplane."

I noticed his short, military-style haircut and replied, "Just guessing but you've been on some military aircraft, right?"

He nodded in the affirmative and told me he was on his way home. Home is a small farming town in southeastern Colorado, population 525. He seemed tickled that I had even heard of it.

He was going home for the first time since his 10-month tour of duty in Iraq. He had just been released from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he had also spent the next 10 months recovering from traumatic injuries.

"What happened to you?" I asked, regretting my intrusion into his privacy the moment the words tumbled out of my mouth.

He lifted his withered right arm across his forehead and explained that he had been struck by a pressure plate IED (improvised explosive device.) He took the brunt of the explosion. He said he was grateful that he had not lost any limbs and that his fellow soldiers escaped uninjured.

He was alive and mostly whole. It was, indeed, something to celebrate. But as he used his MP3 player and attempted to buckle and unbuckle his safety belt, I noticed that his arm was quite atrophied and his fingers did not appear to work at all. There were deep scars on his neck and face. His eye appeared injured.

He was probably not much older than 20 years old. He had paid a dear price in service to his country. I wondered what the future would hold for him.

I flashed on my family's visit to the Vietnam War Memorial just days before that flight. There are thousands of names of young men and women etched into those black granite panels. It's a highly emotional experience to read the names of the dead and contemplate the horrific waste of human potential. And for what?

The Wall also reminds me of the survivors of that war. I have cousins and friends who returned from Vietnam as broken men. To what end?

The same can be asked of the Iraq war. What is the point? How is the world better for what we have done?

Shortly before takeoff, the flight attendants seated a gentleman between the young soldier and me. He told me that he was Iranian and had emigrated to the United States more than 30 years ago. In all that time, he had returned to the Middle East just once. "It was too depressing. I haven't been back."