GI’s Letter Brings Mideast Face-Off Home : A Fullerton Family Learns War Has a Way of Putting Things Quickly in Perspective

One way the Mideast crisis is striking home in Orange County is that a support group for families of troops stationed in Saudi Arabia has been meeting. Among them are Dee and Ronnie Muir of Fullerton, parents of 20-year-old Robbie Muir, a paratrooper in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

The Muirs’ observations and communications with their son provide a fascinating kind of “home-front watch” to supplement the news and commentary that comes daily from world leaders and military and diplomatic analysts.

In Washington last week, policy makers were debating what the best course of action in the Iraq conflict would be from here on out--whether to try to replace Saddam Hussein or to be satisfied with Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and the protection of Saudi Arabia.

But it is unlikely that any of the participants in those high-level conversations will hear anything more to the point than the observation of Ronnie Muir, who last week said simply that his son is “the line in the sand that President Bush has drawn. My son.”

The letters from Robbie himself are equally direct and simple in their assessment of a complex situation. In his last telephone conversation before leaving, the young soldier had expressed his love for his parents and asked forgiveness for anything he might have done wrong. It was a moment of recognition in a young life that there is the possibility that there might not be another chance to set life’s record straight.

Then there was the short letter from the soldier that made reference to the threat of chemical warfare, an experience he had not faced while participating in the invasion of Panama. He wrote, “You have no idea what I feel like inside right now.”

No wonder the simple pleasures of life seemed so wonderful from a distant desert: He longed for a ride in a golf cart and a root beer float.

Twenty is a young age to be making peace with the world, but the prospect of war has a way of putting things quickly in perspective.

The world has been getting plenty of analysis from the experts, but in some ways, nothing is more profound than the ordinary communication between a family and a son at the front.