As some of you may know, my wife works at UNLV and every so often lets me know of events going on at the campus. Tonight we went to a college tour roundtable that is part of the IAVA.
Now, I do not speak for the group and, frankly, hadn't heard of them before tonight, but I went and listened to the stories of three servicemen who did a tour (sometimes more) in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They each gave a synopsis of their time in theatre with a few anecdotes, some humorous, some very grim. Then they opened the floor for a Q & A session. Now, granted, southern Nevada is a lot more liberal than the rest of the state, so you can imagine a certain attitude against the war.
The servicemen involved handled it well however. It didn't hurt that, when pushed, much of their personal beliefs were in line with much of the crowd, but they adamantly stressed that their goal was to speak of the troops and not about policies. They did a very good job of channeling the discussion down those lines.
What I got most from the discussion was that each of them, some who went through unscathed, others not, physically or mentally, were proud of their service and we very strong in the belief that we should actually support our troops, not by mere words or ribbon magnets or, especially, tying their service to some political agenda, but by actually supporting the troops.
To do this, they offered a myriad of sites to send items to the troops, something I've always been a proponent of and know more than a few of you have done for specific soldiers and the force at large. They also went on to encourage people to demand better treatment of the troops once they get home; primarily in getting VA hospitals built, funded, and resourced.
If you want to know more, I encourage you to visit the IAVA site for more on this group. I enjoyed listening to them speak and am glad I took the time to spend an evening listening to their stories.
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