Why does this story choke me up? Maybe it's the fact that these people are refugees, but are willing to share their pittance with Americans soldiers. Maybe we really do represent hope to these people.

I was born just following WWII, in 1948 and all my life I've had this feeling that Americans were like my aunts and uncles who went without and bought warbonds, saved aluminum foil, and all the rest, and one uncle who disappeared in the middle of the Pacific, and another who was captured in the Phillipines, marched in the Bataan Death March, and lived to come home. But all I ever saw in our media as I grew up was the leftist view of our troops, especially during Vietnam.

Now I'm seeing these young GIs riding to the rescue of oppressed people. standing up to an evil force in the world, and I'm thinking "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." It's good to feel like an American again.