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Man's death brings war to Strand

Sep- 9-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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ISSAC J. BAILEY - A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

The war has come home.

Airman 1st Class Carl L. Anderson Jr. is the first member of the U.S. military from our area killed in Iraq. He was killed Aug. 29, by a homemade explosive near some place called Mosul. [...]

I didn't know Carl Anderson, but I know his parents gave me a wedding gift six years ago. I didn't know then a silver soup spoon would bring the reality of war into my home.

His father is a preacher in a small area of Georgetown where my wife was raised.

I don't know what to say. It seems too easy to call him a hero, but obviously he was.

More than 1,000 Americans killed by friendly fire, vehicle crashes, cluster bomb explosions and suicide attacks. They died in a country with 25 million human beings I spent most of my life barely caring that God had given them breath, that he had put them on this Earth for a reason, as well.

By the time you read this, a car covered in U.S. military decals driven by soldiers in formal dress probably has made another excruciating trip to the next family ... and the next, literally delivering death to their front door, as it did for the Andersons.

Before you finish reading this, another family probably has cried and begun to mourn.

No matter our position on the merits of the war, we shouldn't forget to cry with them.


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