What was he fighting for?

Yesterday I arrived at the airport in Austin, Texas (nice guesses, Jay and Kell!) and walked to the parking garage where the rental cars are located. During this brief walk, I met a young soldier, still wearing his cammys, who had just returned from overseas (he did not specify which country). My "introduction" to him occurred when I looked over after hearing him say "asshole," not very much under his breath. Without a word from me, he explained that he was upset because airport security would not allow him to catch a cab upstairs, but was requiring him to go downstairs to the airport cab stand.

"Explain" may not be precisely the right word. Before I could explain that there are typically municipal ordinances that regulate where cabs can and cannot pick up passengers at an airport--making the decision totally out of the control of airport security--the soldier embarked upon an invective-filled diatribe. The soldier called the airport security guy various names I won't repeat here, whining about the injustice of being required to walk downstairs and, finally, ending by calling him a "foreigner," as if that was one of the unrepeatably bad words with which the tirade began.

I was dying to ask this soldier why he fought overseas for our country, if it wasn't to make this the kind of place where "foreigners" and others could live and work in peace, without being treated with disdain due to not having been born here. I did not do this, however, because I was afraid he would kick my ass and, for once, showed restraint. But I thought for a long time about the hatred and prejudice in the soldier's voice. I thought about what he did and did not learn while he was in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever he was. I wondered where and how one could possibly learn these lessons, if not there. And I worried that there are many others like him, either because of the war or despite the war or having nothing to do with the war, and that they are the future of our country.