Monthly Archives: March 2008

Five Years In Iraq

The Iraq War turned 5 years old this week.

While driving I heard something on the radio that moved me and brought a different level of reality to the war for me. A soldier named Brian Turner writing a blog for the New York Times considers the last American soldier to die for that war. This is what I heard:

Who can say where that last soldier is now, at this very moment? Kettlemen City. Turlock. Wichita. Fredricksburg. Omaha. Duluth. She may be in the truck idling beside us in traffic as we wait for the light to turn green. He may be ordering a slice of key lime pie at Denny’s, sitting at a booth with his friends after bowling all night. What name waits to be etched on a stone not yet erected in America? Somewhere out in the vast stretches of our country, somewhere out in Whitman’s America, out among the wide expanse of grasses, somewhere here among us the last soldier may lie dreaming in bed before the dawn as the sun sets over Iraq.

As soon as I got home I tracked down the whole piece. You can read it here: “Requiem for the Last American Soldier to Die in Iraq” and I hope that you do.

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