Are we really gonna go there again?

Joshua Sparling is a Corporal in the 82nd Airborne Division from Ft. Bragg, N.C. , and he lost the lower part of his right leg in an IED road-side attack in Ramadi. Sparling has been at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for the last 14 months recuperating. He heard about last Saturday's peace rally, and he decided to go. His father (a Vietnam vet who has taken up residence in Washington while his son is in the hospital) and he went to the rally, with the idea of expressing the pro-soldier/pro-occupation stance.

Although his choice to attend is guaranteed by our freedoms, it's probably not the best idea. "I'm tired of the anti-war crowd bringing down the morale of my fellow soldiers," Sparling was quoted in several television and newspaper accounts. At some point in the proceedings, something went wrong...or perhaps not.

Sparling said a single male protester spat at him. Other accounts say Sparling spat back, while still other sources say nothing of the kind happened at all. Somewhere in there lies the truth, a truth we probably will never get to the bottom of. In any event, whether it's true or not, last Saturday's rally will more than likely give rise to other rally's down the road, which makes confrontation an inevitability. Sparling himself should have known he was going to bring on someone by his mere presence at the rally, and perhaps he welcomed and even encouraged the encounter.

Corporal Sparling is driven by a force inside him that only those who have done the same can understand, and I myself have many times had to fight the urge to slap the crap out of someone who thought burning the flag was a great social statement. I truly believe everyone is pretty much born to be the way they end up, and all you have to do to verify this is look back upon your own youth and upbringing, and "arm-chair quarterback" the signs that were there, even though at the time you didn't know they were signs. I myself loved parades, marching bands, and all the pomp and ceremony surrounding them. I loved to play war, cowboys and indians, and crawl around in the dirt as a child. I was competitive as all hell, and loved things like the National Anthem at games, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Anyone who wonders how I became a career soldier need only look at my youth to see the framework of my adult life. So I too am driven by the same forces young Corporal Sparling has inside his heart and soul, and I understand his need to show that devotion he has to his nation. As he becomes older, he'll learn to temper the desire for physical reaction/confrontation, and let others be as they are.

As far as this past Saturday is concerned, one thing the American public has never gotten through their thick skulls is why soldiers are willing to do what they do. You hear comments ranging from the ridiculous, "Soldiers just want and avenue to kill people legally," to the absurd, "Soliders are made up of society's under educated and lower economic strata."

In truth, soldiers are the last people who want to go to war, because "go to war" means them. Soldiers don't want to be shot at, but they are. Soldiers don't want to die, but they do. Soldiers don't want to suffer horrifying things like lost limbs, but it happens. Soldiers don't want to leave their spouses and their children, but it's a part of the deal, so they accept that.

When we as American's do something so baseline crude and animalistic as spitting at one of those soldiers, we bring ourselves down to a level beneath the morons who car bomb marketplace's and kill children. Yes, we do. Even the terrorists and insurgents don't condemn their own, as bad as their own may be. When we stoop to criticizing those who willingly and honorably do what they're told to do - not necessarily what they want to do - we tear at the very fabric of unity that has allowed us to progress this far without folding.

And the entire world watches and shakes their heads in contempt at how stupid and spoiled we are.