Why Should Anyone Lose a Leg, an Arm, a Life in the Iraq War?
The above-referenced question flashed across my mind as I stood in line at a bank the other day. I saw a young man with a prosthetic leg. My mind flashed back to my teenage years where I worked as a bus boy at an army hospital for wounded vets. I saw many men trying to adjust to prosthetic arms or legs. Occasionally the men would confide to me how hurt they were that fiancées had broken off engagements or family members who lived close by failed to come and visit them. These indelible memories haunted me as I stood in that line at the bank. I asked the woman standing ahead of me, who was observing the man with the artificial leg, if she thought the Iraq War was worth what the wounded service personnel had lost. In a word she replied, “I think it is outrageous!” That was her succinct assessment, and recalling the pained expressions on the faces of the amputees in that army hospital where I worked still haunts me.
