SAN DIEGO COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : When War Comes Directly Home

For all practical purposes, the war with Iraq has turned San Diego into a Navy town once again.

The statistics tell it all: Approximately one in eight military men and women in the Persian Gulf region is based in San Diego.

The aerial front lines are full of Top Guns from Miramar and Tomahawk cruise missiles built at General Dynamics’ Convair Division.

More than 20 San Diego-based ships are in the Middle East, plus about 21,000 Marines, 29,000 Navy personnel and 500 reservists from San Diego County.

In the first blush of rosy reports from Saudi Arabia, San Diegans had some grounds to be proud of their contribution to this war that we all hoped wouldn’t start.

But the successes felt by the Navy Top Guns and the Convair engineers are rightfully muted, as San Diego adjusts to the reality of war.

For hundreds of thousands of San Diegans who have settled here since Vietnam, this may be the first glimpse of the county’s military soul. For them, San Diego’s reputation as a Navy town was something of the past, diluted as the county grew and consciously diversified.

But that past now has many real faces. Behind the statistics are thousands of children, parents, husbands and wives who have had a whole set of new fears and burdens thrust at them.

There were the painful partings in recent months. Only the hair styles and fashions make the goodbys on the docks seem different from the ones during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And unlike past wars, this time men also sent off their wives, and parents sent off daughters. But the tearful kisses, long letters, hopes and prayers for safe return remain constant in any war.

These are the people who need the community’s special support. So, too, will the many San Diegans with personal roots in gulf countries: Americans who still have family members in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Israel.

But as the war progresses, the bond forged by Wednesday’s successful raids may begin to unravel. Those who disagree with President Bush’s decision to attack, who thought that sanctions should have been given longer to work, will step up their protests. But we hope that the divergence of opinion does not diminish the sense of concern and caring for those directly affected by the war: the San Diegans on the war front and their family and friends on the home front.

Until now, the unfolding saga of war--this first draft of history--is absorbed in aspects of strategy, technology and aircraft--the dumbfounding details of war.

It too easily becomes a tale of faceless armed forces, reduced to statistics and hardware. But in the heat of battle, let us not forget that war is, after all, about lives.