Warning, this may get wordy.

I recently had a pretty poignant and bittersweet experience that I wanted to address and share with all of you. I hope at least one person reading this comes away with something valuable from it.

Earlier this summer, my close friend Jennifer and I made plans to visit Washington state, and stay with an old childhood friend of hers, Jon. I had never met this friend of hers, but I knew from what she had told me that he is a lifelong Republican, and a 16+ year member of the Marine Corps, who has been to Iraq twice. Skeptical, I said "I don't want to spend my whole weekend on the defense, arguing with your conservative friend. If he's an asshole to me, I'm not going to just take it, I'll throw back."

(Aside: Though he and I had never met, she had told both of us quite a bit about the other, and we both knew full well prior to meeting that we were diametric political opposites.)

She, a lifelong Democrat who has been best friends with this guy since they were grade school, said "No, I've already talked to him about that, and there will be no political rants. We're all just going to have a good time. He's really a nice guy - I know that sounds odd, but he totally is."

Reluctantly, I agreed, still worried that the whole trip would be one long disaster.

When he picked us up at the ferry terminal, he was incredibly polite and accommodating, and I sensed an almost palpable effort on his part to do NOTHING that would imply that he was even attempting to broach any subject that MIGHT cause friction. I would have almost preferred that he just fly into a Limbaugh like rant until he combusted, rather than struggle silently to be as neutral as possible. He looked like he was in pain. I knew that we were both dying to "go there" re: The War.

Once back at the house, we all started to relax and talk about all manner of things, none of which were controversial in the least.

A few hours into the visit, however, I couldn't take it anymore.

I broke "the pact."

My friend went downstairs to make a phone call, and I turned to the guy and said, very cautiously, "I know we don't exactly, er, see eye to eye on many things, but I understand you've spent 16 years in uniform."

He gulped audibly and his eyes darted nervously toward the stairs to see if Jennifer might overhear and bust us cold.

"Um, yeah, I enlisted after high school." He borderline whispered.

"Well, personal politics aside, I do thank you for your service. My dad is an Air Force veteran, and I do admire the bravery of those who choose to serve," I said.

I thought he was going to crap himself. He stared for a moment, flabbergasted, and said "Thank you. My dad was in the service too. I have some old pictures of him in uniform, it's hard to tell us apart - well, except his pictures are dog-eared and black and white." He laughed as he got up to go into the office, and then returned with some old framed photos of his dad, who sure enough was a dead ringer for his son.

The ice was broken, and I said "I really want to know about Iraq, and what you experienced over there. There's a lot of debate between the political parties, most of it distorted and sensationalized by the mass media, but I honestly don't know anyone who has actually served in Iraq. Not a single person who can tell me face to face what they actually SAW, minus the TV spin."

Keeping in mind that I could possibly be given a very biased view of the war from this guy, I sat down and listened, prepared to have to do some serious filtering. I was actually really surprised by the sincerity of his response.

First off, I was reminded that he enlisted in the service in the summer of 1991, after the first Gulf War was coming to a close. Fueled by a genuine desire to serve, he was at that time, totally unaware, as we all were, what the future held regarding Iraq. When he got called up to go to the Middle East this time around, he was simply fulfilling his duty, regardless of how he felt about the present conflict.

Expecting a lot of glorifying of Bush's policies, and a "hard sell" on how great the war was going, I was duly shocked to hear him talk very candidly about how nice the Iraqi civilians were that he met, how he had befriended many of them, and missed them now that he was back in the states. He spoke of how sad it was that he, and many others fighting over there had a genuine desire to do some good, but had no idea how any good could possibly come of all of this now, that things had gotten so ugly, so muddled, and so out of control. He seemed, dare I say, baffled...perhaps because once he got to Iraq, he wasn't sure WHAT the mission was supposed to be after a while. He did not bash any particular policy, or politician, just bemoaned the fact that the concept of war used to be different back when his dad served. Back then, the message was clear, the mission was carved in stone, and hopefully, the cause was just. He brought up WWII and how nobody could ever possibly look at that conflict and say, "What were we doing there?" He lamented the fact that sending a bunch of troops into Iraq would not stop terrorism. Terrorist activity could happen everywhere, and anywhere, and small factions of evildoers were scattered all over the planet, not concentrated in Iraq. The threat was scattered, occult, and could not be fought in one place. It would take global cooperation, diplomacy, lot of foreign policy wonks putting their heads together to find a solution - not what's going on now.

It would take pages of text to try to reiterate everything we talked about, but it was surprising what a civil conversation two people from opposite sides of the fence could actually have when there were no pundits to stir the fire, no propaganda to distort the conversation, no anger to distract from the message - just two people, sitting on a staircase, looking at old photos of a smiling young soldier, and respecting one another's common humanity, rather than forgetting it in place of hard-line party affiliation. Finally, Jennifer did bust us having this discussion, but we assured her, we were being civil.

If only more of this could go on, in more households, with more people.

In a nutshell, he and I talked about a lot of things, and chuckled over some of the stereotypes that exist vilifying both parties. We were shocked to learn that while I consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal, and he a Conservative, that we actually had a lot more in common than we had ever imagined we might.

The main gist of this story - and yes...I'm getting to it....

...is that I want to share with all of you what I said to him in response - my take.

I asked him not to allow himself to be distracted by the talking heads on the news stations that tell him how to think, and consider themselves experts on the viewpoints of Democrats, and what motivates us. There's big business in distorting the truth, and fanning the flames, and the mass media as well as the politicians are REALLY good at doing just that. They ABHOR the thought of Liberals and Conservatives sitting down together and actually talking to each other. Because then we might realize that not everyone who is different from us is "the enemy."

Think about it. Those in power love to pit us against one another. They get great pleasure out of making sure we are pissed off at one another, afraid of each other, unable to trust one another, and unable to speak to one another. Envision a little kid trying to play one parent against one another. "Mom said I could do this." "Dad said I could do that." The kid reaps twice the rewards until the two parents get together and both realize neither said any such thing. Then the kid's in deep shit.

Political operatives are really good at this. By convincing the masses that the other side wants to "corrupt the youth" "destroy the institution of marriage" "kill precious babies" "rape the environment" "piss away your tax dollars" "take away your guns" "strip you of your civil rights" "spy on you" "nuke you" "let the terrorists win" etc. they are driving people to the ballot boxes in droves to vote against what they have been made to fear. "The other side is a bogey-man that must be stopped."

Politically neutral, at-ease people who do not feel threatened aren't as likely to show up on election day as pissed off, scared, angry people who are afraid of losing something. Those people show up, alright. And vote, they do. Often times they vote without even realizing that the real issues - the ones we ought to be worried about - were not even broached by the candidates. The voters were fed a lot of sensationalist rhetoric meant to scare them, but hardly any real substance or policy matters were touched upon. But still, the "fear voting" continues, and the open honest dialog never begins.

Don't get me wrong - I'm no Pollyanna, I KNOW there are unreasonable, corrupt, evil people out there. Some of the negative things we hear about others is sadly going to be true. But are we ALL really as bad as others would paint us to be? Or might we be surprised to learn that we've been sold a bill of goods somewhere along the line, in order to cater to the aspirations, calculations, and greed of others?

I asked this Republican soldier to remember his conversation with me next time Ann Coulter or Michael Savage told him that ALL Democrats were unreasonable and evil and bad. I promised him I'd do the same when I was told something similar on my end. (I had to be fair!)

What I really want to get across to any lurking Repubs is this:

When a Democrat stands up and says "I do not support this war" it is NOT because we "hate the troops" or "want the terrorists to win". I doubt ANY Democrat feels that way - not a single one. If they do, I can comfortably say they're an idiot.

Nobody in the Democratic party wants terrorists to win anything. We want an end to this war, because we are damn tired of all the death, all the misery, all the conflict. We "support the troops" in the sense that we are sick of seeing them coming home in caskets. We are weary, appalled at the loss of American lives with no end in sight. We are tired of the death of Iraqi civilians none of whom had ANYTHING to do with the pissing contest between Saddam Hussein and the Bush family, or the incestuous relationship between American politicians and Middle Eastern oil. Our idea of supporting the troops is being "pro-life" in the global sense of the word - pro-life for all, including our soldiers, and the civilians who are dying in endemic numbers - and for what? When we say "bring the troops home now" we mean return our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters to us, AND TO YOU, alive, and in one piece.

We protest the war, not because we feel that we should let the evildoers win out, but because we sincerely believe, after much thought and consideration that staying in Iraq is NOT what will bring order to this world. It won't stomp out terrorism, it won't improve global relations, it's just not working. We tried, we've been there for four years, it's not working. We don't say this to insult or belittle those who are trying to fight the good fight. We say it because this is what the numbers are telling us. Not the pundits, not the politicians, not the reporters. The cold hard numbers of how many have died in this conflict.

We say it because we care about human life.

Every time we turn on the news and hear that more American soldiers have perished in the Middle East, it is like a part of us dies. We all collectively mourn the losses, no matter where we are on the political spectrum. When we see the pictures of those lost, the faces of our brave men and women who served and died in combat, we as Democrats, mourn them with every fiber of our being, whether those soldiers were Democrats or Republicans.

We don't ask if anyone knows the affiliation of the dead before we decide whether or not we care. We do care, trust me.

When we say "bring them home alive and soon" we mean your loved ones too. For no other reason other than we are tired of the loss of human life. There's no other motivating factor. No terrorist sympathizing, no political grandstanding, no desire to "stick it to Bush."

Politics aside, we just want this to end. For everyone's sake.

Thank you.


*Edited for weird typo that spell check missed.