by
Michael P. Jensen
Guest Blogger
Editor’s Note: This is off the general topic of Cogito!, but it deserves to be seen and read. However you feel about the war in Iraq, one must never forget that there are living, feeling beings involved. -sg

I met two warriors last week. My wife and I were in the Philadelphia airport on our way home. Cydne disappeared as she sometimes does when there is a dog nearby, so she was easy to find. I just looked for the dog.

The leash was held by a man dressed for combat. He was just back from Iraq, and happy to be home for a couple of weeks. The dog, a German Shepherd mix, was his partner, trained to chase down what his human partner called “bad guys.” We had an interesting conversation. This good man did not need my “hate Bush first” attitude, so I kept that to myself, preferring to learn from his perspective.

I noticed the dog had been scratched on the muzzle. Was it in combat, I wondered? It was. They were after a “bad guy,” who managed to escape through some anti-personnel wire. The dog was not so fortunate. His head became entangled in it. His human partner used his knife to cut the dog lose. This K-9 soldier then chased down and caught the “bad guy,” despite the blood on his face. The soldier added that the capture might have saved some lives.

I wondered how the dog reacted to combat. Brilliantly. On a few occasions they were in vehicles that were disabled by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), with American causalities. They got out of the vehicle combat ready, though it is the nature of an IED that you can not always find the person who set it off. He said, “We are all about saving lives, but that’s hard to do with an IED.”

A small crowd had gathered, and someone who noticed the strong bond between man and dog asked the soldier if he could keep the dog when he retired. The soldier answered that he wants to adopt him, but may not be able to unless they retired at the same time. I mentioned that this problem had been overcome in the past, but this young man nobly said, “Yeah, but his mission is to save lives. He can’t do that if I take him home. As much as I would miss him, it is better that he stay in the service even if I leave.”

No matter how you feel about the war and how we were manipulated into it, you have to admire the selflessness of this young man. His constant refrain was about saving America lives, which leads to an observation that, perhaps, this soldier would not embrace.

He did not speak of accomplishing the mission of securing Iraq, or of freeing the Iraqi people, or of stabilizing the region to make it friendly to the United States. Access to oil for the Bush family company (Pennzoil) was not discussed. The only mission he mentioned was to keep Americans alive.

Bush and the chicken-hawk neo-cons have put thousands of American soldiers in harm’s way to accomplish their questionable agenda. These soldiers are in a shooting gallery and they know it. Many of them just want to come home outside of a coffin. He did not say so, but I strongly felt that he wanted it all to end as soon as possible so no one else would be killed, yet he would willingly return for as long as necessary to try to save more lives. America should be ashamed that he needs to.

As I was on my knees rubbing the dog’s head, I asked, “How do you say, ‘Thank you for your service’ in dog-language?” This excellent young man replied, “The way you’re saying it now.” I kept rubbing until my flight was called.