Guest Author - Tracey-Kay Caldwell

Sarah Adams is the BellaOnline's Republican Party Editor. In her article, Religious Strife Turning Point for Iraq, she asks her readers to send her positive stories about Muslims. In response to her article, I had a long conversation with my son. My son is in the Army; a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He will return to Iraq again this June. After each deployment, he came home with photos and stories of the local people. I ask him to tell me again about the people he met there. This is what he told me:

Mom, first you have to remember we don't look human in all our gear. Imagine how you would feel if foreign soldiers were patrolling your neighborhood. Driving across your land and up to your front door, demanding you come out and talk to them. Most did not shoot at us. A male member of the household would come out to speak to us. He would offer us a gift, as this is their custom. Sometimes the children were friendly. Sometimes they were afraid we were there to take their parents away. Sometimes, we were there to take their parents away.

Whether Afghani or Iraqi, we called them all hajji. Hajji means old man. Sometimes they would look at us strange when we would call them that because they weren't old men. About two-thirds of the Hajjis we met spoke some English. In Afghanistan, they liked us. We weren't there to fight them, we were there to fight the Taliban. We were bringing in a lot of money into their economy, providing jobs. We had hired the locals to build temporary barracks. I remember the hajji we called Jamie. He spoke the best English. His parents had sent him to America for high school. He could cook. He fixed rice and flat bread for their lunch. The Afghani's did not eat much meat; they could not afford it.

Iraq was different. The Iraqi's had mixed feeling about our being there. The magistrates and city governments certainly liked us when we were giving them money. We gave them money for a soccer field. They spent the money but never built a soccer field. The children would ask you to take pictures of them. They loved to pose for the camera. Our translator had lived in Iraq until 1985. He was mean to the Iraqis. He felt you had to deal aggressively with some of the locals.

What were the insurgents like? Occasionally you would encounter a well-trained cell. Their attacks were well planned. That's when American soldiers got killed. They would attack and disappear. But most time it was civilians who had joined the fight with no military training. They were scared. They were just fighting us because we were the invaders. They did not have a strong ideological hatred of Americans. They would come out fighting for their lives. They did not realize we were just there to patrol.

The Iraqis were more like us than different. They drive nice cars. They have nice computers and internet. They have nice homes. By the time I left Iraq, all the children were attending school. It was safe enough for women to walk the street during the daytime. Things were getting more stable everyday.

My Son was in Afghanistan from June 2002 to December 2002. He was in Iraq from August 2003 to April 2004. When he returns to Iraq this June, he will have the opportunity to see what progress has been made in the Iraqi's lives.