For many of us, we celebrated America’s Independence Day over a barbecue cookout followed by the predictable, yearly pyrotechnic display. For Laotian Americans, July has double significance because July 19th is Laos’s Independence Day. There are no barbeques or fireworks to commemorate this moment in Laos history save a passing mention of it. Perhaps the only fireworks reserved for July 19th would be the occasional vitriol and protest from a small number of Lao expats in front of the Lao Embassy in DC.

In this July issue, we start a three-part series titled A Soldier’s Letter from Iraq in which we share a series of letters from a Lao American soldier in Iraq about his life in the war zone. It is not known how many Laotian Americans have been deployed to Iraq or what life is like for them there or how they are getting along. Because of that, we encourage our readers, especially those who are in the military or have family in the military to send us your stories or just share your thoughts on this series. 

Regardless of where one stands on whether we should have invaded Iraq or whether withdrawing now is a good idea, there is a real, mounting cost on military families that gets only theoretical treatment for most people whose only sacrifice was to go out and spend more money to grease the economy as George Bush had urged. Thus, the unfiltered stories of the ordinary soldier in Iraq—whether he is avoiding mortar attacks or finding joy in the mundane act of eating familiar foods provided by Kellogg Brown and Root—are crucially important not because they are human interest stories in and of themselves, but they bring a human face to the conflict reminding us that that soldier could easily be us.