All the left-over hubbub about Iowa yesterday left me thinking about a truck that drove by on a freeway near Dallas with white-washed lettering splashed across its rear cab window.  It was not a new truck.  It had the weathered look of real work.  The driver was not displaying his support for a team involved in the high school football playoffs.  Instead, the ghostly lettering proclaimed, “Welcome home!  Merry Christmas!”  On either side of the window, a red and gold decal of the Marine Corps framed the message.

I have no idea how the returning soldier population and their immediate families are going to vote in this year’s election.  I wonder if any or all of them will remember that Barack Obama brought them home from the useless and costly lie that was Iraq.  I think about those who died, were maimed or are now psychologically impaired, and I am thankful that Obama defeated John McCain.  Had he been elected, McCain would not have ended Iraq and might have expanded military operations there.  That is what military men do.I do not tire of watching families being reunited with their returning soldier-fathers; soldier-brothers; soldier-sons; soldier-mothers; soldier-daughters; soldier-sisters; and soldier-whatevers.  I wonder how many lives on average are affected directly and happily by the return of one soldier.  Four? Ten? Twenty?  In the case of HispanicLatino soldiers, the count could be in the scores.

I wonder how many of these returning soldier-men and soldier-women and their families – after so much pain and so many tours of duty – will vote for the Republican nominee to be commander-in-chief.  The idea is rather salient, given that the presumptive nominee of the war party, Mitt Romney, is already rattling sabers over Iran.  This from a man none of whose five very healthy sons – not one of them – ever put on the army green, the navy white or the air force blue – much less the Marine Corps red.  Neither did Romney himself.  Nor did I, which is why I am not so keen to send armies across the oceans.

It would be interesting to know if the political synapses of the returning soldiers and their families also will connect the fact that they are the bottom one percent of the 99 percent.  These men and women are the complete and polar opposites of the one percent at the top of the social ladder that Romney represents.  John McCain at least served.  That was dangerous enough.  Romney is more like George W. Bush.  Barack Obama did not serve either – but at least he understands the world is a different place now and that all of its conflicts do not require armed military response and boots on the ground.  We are going to have to watch carefully the nuclear machinations of Iran and North Korea, and American soldiers might yet have to go at it again.

But perhaps it can be done differently and honestly the next time, with more of the world contributing.  But also with the nation’s healthy sons and daughters from throughout the social stratosphere making the sacrifice.  That way, the next war will not be a complete whitewash.

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