When I served in Iraq, I recalled what I missed the most about the Fourth of July: barbecues, corn on the cob slathered in butter, cold beer in the cooler, iced lemonade, juicy red watermelon running down your chin and rockets that “pop” instead of “BOOOOOOOM.”
American holidays in Iraq are not much different than every other day there, despite the changing decorations in the chow halls. You still have to work; you still have to worry about the enemy; you still have to worry about your family; you still have to worry about your men and women and their families; you still have to hear the metallic groan of the generators at three in the morning; you still have to wipe the sand from your eyes and feel the sandstorms burning holes in your lungs, coloring everything in the world a hazy, eerie orange.
I thought of freedom a lot in Iraq. Mostly, I thought about my own, and how much I longed to be free of the Army, free of the war, free of the fear, free of the killing. I wanted to be back in bed with my wife Judy. I wanted to caress and comb her hair, straight and smooth as corn silk, through my fingers. I wanted to hold her hand and walk with her under a canopy of shade trees and share bites from a chocolate ice- cream cone.
I thought of the freedom we were trying to bring the Iraqis. All those courageous people who braved the car bombs and the snipers and the vests packed with plastic explosives and ball bearings, just so they could vote. I thought of them smiling and poking holes in the sky with their index fingers, each ink-dyed an indelible blue – a true symbol of triumph.
I also thought of the sand red with blood. I thought of the glowing red tips of tracer rounds arcing through the black sky at night, and the red-orange glow of oil fires burning on the horizon.
Back at home a year later, I thought of the long lines that snaked out the doors of Denver polling stations last November and of the people who left before voting because they were too busy, or too impatient, or unable to wait because of kids at home, a conference call that could not be missed, the dog groomer who closed early.
I thought of the people who stayed.
What else can I say about freedom that hasn’t already been said by better men than me, words spoken by all those spirits drifting beneath the ice at Valley Forge, their lips blue and eyes wide with terror. Or screamed by all those young men who turned ashen gray with death and are now lying hushed and still beneath the fertile green fields of Gettysburg? Or whispered by all those haunted shadows floating under the rattling leaves in the Ardennes forest? Or tasted by all those cold corpses stacked high like cordwood atop the frozen ground at Chosin? Or experienced by those naïve students of peace at Kent State, who were planted by tyranny and fear beside rows of golden daffodils? Or understood by all those beautiful black souls gently swaying from sturdy oak branches down South, their shoeless feet stained blood-red by the iron-rich Mississippi dirt?
I thought of freedom. I thought of the bodies twisted and broken, of the personal histories cut short, their dog-eared pages yellowed with time, of listing tombstones sanded and cracked, eroded by sun and rain and snow and overgrown with moss. I thought of freedom. I thought of the unreadable names on the crumbling stones in the rear of the cemetery, beneath the twisted and gnarled elms. Unreachable. Unrecognizable. Unknown. Is this the price of liberty? And if so, then who must pay it? The soldier? The sailor? The airman? The Marine? The father, the daughter? The mother of a dead son, turned into a fine red mist by an artillery shell hidden on the side of a desert road, this woman who now stands in line behind me at Starbucks with an aching hole in her chest, waiting as I order a $4 latte?
I thought of freedom. I thought of the names of the dead that appeared in today’s newspaper. I thought of freedom, and the valor and the violence and the bloodshed it requires to capture it. I thought of freedom and the sacrifice – that bitter fruit – and the toil and the pain and the strength of will it commands to keep it. I thought of freedom, and the courage it demands: Courage to act. Courage to object. Without courage, there can be no freedom.
I thought of freedom – and I thought of the dead. For in the cost of liberty, the dead speak the loudest. Their voices echo back at us with each snap of the flag and each colored bloom that opens up in the sky every Fourth of July.
The dead have no use for liberty. There is no room for it in the grave. Freedom is – must be – for the living. It must be.
Yes, I thought of freedom.
And of hope.
And of courage.
And of America.
Happy Fourth of July.