I'm okay, you're okay
rogerWILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com

The airports are filled with comfortable travelers these days, an American stew.

I watched them last week in Philadelphia and New York: old and young, white collar, blue collar and variously hued. They were born in epidermal pinks or creams or peaches or milky nutmegs; or in raven and sable, chestnut brown or cinnamon yellow. In rare cases they're red, if that's what you call the light-through-root beer cast of a Native American's skin.

All Americans. These are my people and yours, although a nephew of mine born and raised in Colorado disputes that; he says they're not his people. A recent graduate of Northwestern University, he says they're no more important than anybody else, and thus no more his cause, and no more his people, than the average Egyptian or Ethiopian or Eritrean or Episcopalian. The country, in other words, is nothing to him. He lives in New York, and considers himself a citizen only of the world, who would surrender the world (he has told me) only for his immediate family, and maybe a few friends. Not for these people, before others.

Mostly soft and mainly overweight, airport travelers are noticeably those who live in a place and time defined by vast food opportunities and air-conditioned living, complete with available medical expertise, all of it somehow protected.

But protected by what, by magic? I don't think they ask themselves. Instead they slide like long slow sentences up and down the length of airport terminals, in directed oblivion - directed to this gate or that, this comfortable life, or that.

Most or all of them pay taxes, I suspect. And none of them appear armed. I mention those facts because a number of people in the world have expressed an interest in killing them.

But they leave their protection to somebody else. Who, exactly?

Clearly, these travelers do not expect their enemies to appear in their airport terminals, or for that matter in their homes or schools, or anywhere else, anytime soon.

Together they seem to say, like a '70s mantra, "I'm okay, you're okay, I'm safe, you're safe, aren't we?"

Like most long slow sentences, however, eventually they'll suffer punctuation.

And last week, the signs of that punctuation appeared among them as young, hard men. Their heads mostly shaved, their jeans and T-shirts or uniforms hanging loosely around their lean forms, they reminded every passing person of the war in Iraq, and of how some lives are much more comfortable than others.

The punctuators are not comfortable. Those I saw were mostly white, but their skins had been toasted to a color as brown as cafe mocha. They sat in the airport bars or walked toward the gates of departing planes ignored by everybody they passed. They were either "on leave" or coming off it, and reporting back to duty stations that could get them killed.

In the bars, I saw no one buying them drinks, or even trying to engage them in conversation. (Hey, how you doing? If you don't mind talking for a minute, tell me where you're going. And let me buy that beer for you.)

I did see puffy, muscled-up white guys with tattoos looking at them, sitting near them, sort of sizing them up.

I didn't see middle-aged folks talking to the young men - baby boomers, say. And I sure didn't see young women or 30-something, career-bound couples, their young kids in strollers, so much as glancing twice at the troops who fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Bush administration says it's one war against something ambiguously defined as "terror," but it looks like two wars, to me.)

These troops were wholly ignored, except by each other. Which is odd, considering that we're all supposed to be in this together. (Except my nephew.)

But in Florida, as of August 31, about 180 of them who once passed through our airports themselves will never be in this together, again, with you and me.

You might have walked past one and never known it; you might have offered to buy him a drink - or her a drink, in the case of Army Specialist Karen Clifton of Lehigh Acres, who was killed on the first day of this very summer in which we carry on our lives so blithely: June 21, 2007. But you probably didn't.

And you missed the chance to say hello - and as it turns out, good bye - to Marco Silva and Roy Wood of Alva; or Dan Eggers and Manuel Lopez of Cape Coral; or Miles Henderson, of Fort Myers and Jimmy Shelton, of Lehigh Acres; or Brandon Gordon and Wentz Shanaberger of Naples. I may have missed some of their names.

And why not? Because it's not your war? Because you don't like the Bush administration? You think the young man was stupid for joining he military, and it was his choice not yours? You're not in it together? You have to get to your next plane or business appointment? Your kid's nose is running? You're too tired? You think you should mind your own business? You didn't choose this war? You don't believe in war? You don't want a troubled person on your hands? You don't want to talk politics?

Well, that's thoughtful of you.

If you don't like the war, call or write your U.S. representative or senator, or for that matter the president or the local newspaper editor. Make sure you vote, instead of just pouring another glass of white wine and admiring yourself in the mirror. I don't like the war, either, and every time I see Dick Cheney smirking or hear George W. Bush pontificating, I'm reminded of how much I don't like it, or them.

But keep this in mind: these young people are yours and mine, and in the truest sense, they serve us, whether or not we're in charge of how they do it. If things get really rough for us sometime, and the American-stew haters come back into the airport terminals or somewhere else - as eventually they will, one way or another - who do you think is going to stand up for you?

I'll tell you who: that scrawny, unhappylooking kid with a high-and-tight haircut, brown as a chestnut, walking through the airport, and being studiously ignored by his fellow travelers. That's who.

Meanwhile, consider this: U.S. casualties in this Bush-league war now amount to almost 3,800 dead since March 19, 2003, and 27,700 wounded.

Florida lost 1,946 dead in Viet Nam, and so far it will eternally miss 180 who left their lives and hopes in 21st century Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be more.

And if you missed your chance with the lost people - your people - now you can never buy them a drink or say hello, again. So don't miss a chance next time. ¦