In Los Angeles: a Human Factor : With loved ones over there, the war comes into the home

The unfolding saga of war--the first draft of history--has been absorbed in aspects of strategy, technology and aircraft, all those dumbfounding war details.

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.

It’s about the daily personal struggle between duty and sacrifice for the thousands of families separated from their loved ones on the front lines in the Persian Gulf.

It’s about husbands and wives, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.

It’s about trying to rationalize the wretchedness of war to innocent children who too early must reconcile the contradiction between learning to avoid confrontation and understanding why mommy or daddy is away--fighting.

Life may appear normal on the home front in Southern California, but few lives are untouched by the haunting uncertainty of war.

In East Los Angeles Wednesday, in the quiet of her small wood-frame house, Rachel Reyes sat alone, sobbing at the news of the beginning of war. Her home has become a gathering place for other mothers like herself, who daily share their hopes and fears for their sons in the gulf.

Black communities in Los Angeles and elsewhere bear a disproportionately high share of the war’s suffering. There are few black families who don’t have a friend or relative in the gulf. For many like 25-year-old Robert Jackson, the father of one, the military provided employment and new opportunity. He signed up last month at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in the Crenshaw District.

In Ventura, little Isabel Arechiga, a second-grader at Lincoln Elementary School, said of war, “Think of the little kids who are going to get killed. A lot of people are going to die, and that’s really sad.”

And Fuad Killu, an Iraqi native who lives in Glendale with his wife, listened in disbelief to CNN reports of the bombing of Baghdad, where his three grown children live near a refinery. “My God, at this moment, I don’t know if my children are dead or not.”

For many it may be difficult to understand anti-war protesters who have gathered from Ojai to Westwood. Yet these demonstrations should be accommodated without such incidents as rocks being thrown at protesters in Thousand Oaks. Another demonstrator was hit by a car. That’s outrageous, unnecessary and un-American.

The protesters’ pacifism should be respected. It doesn’t mean they’re not patriotic. It’s important for all Americans to hold together now, united in hopeful prayer for everyone in the Middle East.

We all have the same urgent goal: the safe and timely return of our fighting men and women.