Making a Difference, One Life at a Time

If you can find the right places to look -- outside the mainstream American media, that is -- you will be as amazed and overwhelmed as I am at the sheer number and the variety of stories of heroes in our United States Armed Forces today.

HappyNews.com, one of several sites that often highlights such stories, brings us this reminder of a little Afghan girl who will be returning to her home this month with a new chance for life (see the original story for a heartwarming picture of this beautiful little girl):

Basira Jan, born with a malformed heart that left her body starved of oxygen, faced a bleak future amid the country's poverty -- until Indiana National Guardsmen heard about her plight and vowed to help.

We hear so much from the mainstream media about the evil atrocities being committed by our government and it's occupying forces across the Middle East that it is a rare and special thing to actually hear in the media about a U.S. soldier doing something good.

"I wanted to make a difference, to make a little piece of the world better because we were there," said Indiana Guardsman Capt. Michael Roscoe, 33, a physician's assistant who examined Basira last spring when her father brought her to Camp Phoenix, where American soldiers train the Afghan army.

Because of the efforts of Capt. Roscoe and his fellow guardsmen, little Basira and her father were brought to the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, where she underwent corrective heart surgery that has given her a totally new lease on life. In their absence, guardsmen still stationed at Camp Phoenix have been working to support the rest of Basira's family, supplying food and medical supplies to her mother and seven siblings.

For another such story of the difference our armed forces are making in individual lives in Afghanistan, see USAF Battles Terrorism with Love.