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We Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and Sailors don't ask you for much. We do the jobs we are assigned to do, regardless of what they are, and we don't ask you to thank us or even respect us - but it hurts when you don't. It takes a lot to hurt a Servicemember; we've got tough exteriors, but some things can cut us in a way that a bayonet never could. However, we've got a lot of discipline, which means that we won't show the hurt that some of our own fellow countrymen seem eager to heap upon us.

Make no mistake, though - we do feel it. Every time someone tells a tale of spitting on a veteran, we bleed a little for him. Every time someone refuses to acknowledge that we are needed by suggesting that we're second-class citizens with no other options, a tear burns in our eye - but we try not to let it fall. Every time one of our "battle buddies" bears the brunt of a protester's anger (whether we know them or not), we choke back the lump in our throats.

It also hurts when people suggest that my brothers and sisters in arms are dying in vain. I beg you, on their behalf, to please reconsider if that's what you think. Each one of us swore to do our duty by this country, and right now our duty is to go to Iraq and make a difference for her people. We don't know the president, we don't know his cabinet members, and we don't control where we go or what we do; however, we swore that we would follow orders and trust in the government - so that's precisely what we do.

I have been to Iraq, and I'm slated to go again very soon. I saw plenty of combat and received plenty of direct enemy fire on my last tour, and I'll see it again when I go back. I've held friends' hands as they lay dying; I've given blood at the emergency hospital every time it's been needed.

If I die there, I would hate for someone to say that I died in vain.

Do people who say that my brothers and sisters are dying in vain have any clue about what kind of impact we are making for those people? Have they seen the looks on the little kids' faces as they rush up to us, daring each other to touch a revered American Soldier? Have they heard the mothers wailing in agony when their children have been killed by a VBIED (car bomb)? Have they seen the undisguised relief on the face of a father and husband who we have reunited with his missing family?

They have not.

I have seen all of those things, and more - I have seen injustices committed by terrorists that would make the calmest person's blood

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