Military Families - I Heard A Sad Story The Other Day....

[global1]

a family was estranged because of one of the sisters stands on the Iraq war and *. She said that she has been shunned by her sister's family. Can't see her nieces and nephews. Parents won't talk to her. All because she is against the Iraq war and *Co. It seems that her sister's husband is in Iraq and she has bought the *Co story.

As I thought about this - I'm thinking that most military families have to believe in the war and *Co. They have to have something to cling to should their loved one be killed in this tragedy. They have to believe that their loved ones are fighting for the right thing. The opposite would be even more damaging to them if they believed that their loved ones are fighting and dying in vain.

Has anybody else run into this?

[Divernan]

1. OH, yeah! - multigenerational

One cousin married an army officer back in the 50's. Two of their three sons are career army officers with multiple tours in Iraq. I don't know how the two sons feel about Bush, but for their Dad (who has been out of the Army since the 70's (and didn't go to Nam), anyone who disagrees with Bush on any issue, not just Iraq, is a fool and a traitor. In his mind, if you oppose the Iraq war/invasion, you are dishonoring every soldier who ever fought for the US going back to the Revolutionary War. He used to send me all these neocon emails, which stopped when I started sending the Snopes debunking, not just to him, but to his circle of neocon ex-military buddies. Ironically, this dad was always stationed either in Germany or in the states and has never been in combat. His sons are infantry - and in the annual photo laden Christmas letter (the only correspondence I now have with them) the pictures show these men with empty stares, no smiles, posing (on leave) with their equally miserable looking wives and kids. The older boy's eldest daughter just married a rather older Army officer who had the similar chilling stare in his wedding pictures.