Last Saturday's Support Our Soldiers event at the Neponset VFW post was a moving affair, as a couple of hundred local people turned out to donate all sorts of everyday items that can be so helpful to our men and women struggling through life in the desert of Iraq.

The event was almost lost in the media mix across the city, as local stations focused more heavily on an anti-war rally on Boston Common and a patriotic rally down on Cape Cod. When WBZ-TV gave some on-air promotion to the event the evening before, they gave a bad address, placing the event not on Neponset Ave. but on Dorchester Ave., squarely in the heart of South Boston. Too bad.

For the tone that was evident at the Dorchester event represented the very best of the American spirit- neighbors coming together with neighbors to lend a helping hand at a time of great stress.

Our people were neither pro-Bush nor anti-war; rather, they were there out of a strong compassion for their neighbors- mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters- who otherwise would struggle alone, deep in anxiety over the safety of their loved ones now in harm's way. Nominally, it was meant to gather small everyday items to be shipped to the troops. In fact, it was a coming together of friends and neighbors to give moral support to their neighbors left at home.

This war against Saddam has the potential to create huge divides- between Muslim and the West, America and Europe, even American citizen and their neighbors. In this new 21st century military, the war's impact strikes so quickly, as reserve and national guard troops have been mobilized from our midst to engage the enemy. Everyday life as we know it might not come again for a long time.

As a people, the moral imperative now is to pray for our troops and to support each other.

-Ed Forry