What have I done ???


I am here between the then and the now
The man in the caves wants to kill me
The man in the media calls me a killer
What have I done so wrong for so many to despise me
Am I wrong for loving my country?
Am I wrong for giving my life so that others won't have to?
Am I wrong for weeping when my brothers die,
so that I may feel the spit of ignorance when I return home?
Am I so naive that my beliefs are upside down?

The rage wells within me. When so many, so far from here,
cannot possibly understand why we were there;
yet their hatred causes me to question all that I have never questioned.
I know that if they could see through my eyes for a single hour,
respect would surely replace the hatred born of ignorance.
They cannot know my nightmares.
They cannot know how their hatred burns cruelly in my mind.
Yet I fight and die to defend them and their freedom to hate me.
What irony this is.
Fanaticism and ignorance are forever busy - and need feeding.
They feed on my blood and the blood of my brothers.

I fight for them, but moreover, I fight for those who know why I'm here.
Those silent few whose moral courage strengthens me.
And I fight for my brothers, who I can no longer see, but know they have
been taken to a special place for those who put their lives on the line to
protect those that cannot defend themselves.

To those that have defended it, Freedom has a taste the protected will never know.

Semper Fi