A Pilgrim’s Digression

Perhaps because the author’s name is Matt, perhaps because several times in my life I myself have considered joining the military, I was interested to read Matt Pollinger’s op-ed for the Wall Street Journal today, Mightier than the pen: why I gave up journalism to join the Marines.

Mr. Pollinger is obviously afflicted with much the same kind of internal contradictions as myself. How does one accustomed to physical laziness, free thinking, and self-expression via the pen even consider joining an organization whose members are known as Jar Heads (partly because their bald heads are jar-like, but also because their heads are supposed to be empty like a jar and thus ready to be refilled with the rules, habits, and customs of the Marine corps)?

Difficult to say. Me, I’ve always had a soft spot for the military. My Grandfather served in the Navy in World War II, and though he died before I could ever find out the details of his experience, I have come to a late obsession with his service, undistinguished as it was.

Without going into the details of what I do for a living or where I work, my days are spent reading and listening to veterans tell their war stories. I look at old black and white photos from the forties all day. Every day, I relive the then-ordinary drama of enlisting or being drafted and leaving the farm or the family business to join a fraternity of men, thousands of whom would lose their lives on sandy or rocky Pacific island beaches, snowy, frigid Belge forests, and in the sky over Europe and Japan, among other foreign places. It’s difficult not to idealize the men and the time and place in which they lived, not to mention the war in which they fought.

Though it’s probably too late for me to join any but the reserves or Guard, if I were to join the military, I would join because I longed for an intensely personal, defining experience. There is nothing so bracing as the prospect of violent death.

On the other hand, I’ve also read enough personal accounts of war to know that some men piss themselves when confronted with their first bombardment (and some keep on pissing themselves right through their last bombardment), and all men regardless of their strength scream for their mothers when they are severely wounded. If I were to join, I think it would be a decision based on a knowledge both of what is to be gained, and what potentially could be lost. Also, I would join because I’d love to write about the experience. Despite the sly implication of Mr. Pottinger’s title, I do believe the pen is a pretty mighty instrument, both of war and of peace. Otherwise, why would the Pentagon spend so much money on propaganda in its wars?

Thus my reasons for joining would be clear-eyed, perhaps even a bit selfish. Mr. Pottinger joined the Marines because he saw a video of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi beheading an American. He also relates his joining the Marines to his experience working in China for the Journal. He says he has witnessed firsthand what it is like to live in a country where questioning the authority of the government usually results in a good beating by the police.

From this I gather that he is motivated by a desire to provide the Iraqis with the kinds of freedoms Americans enjoy. An admirable motivation, if one believes it is the purpose of the American military to provide that freedom to other nations, forcibly if necessary. It wasn’t so long ago that the military eschewed such sentimental idealism. I perfectly recall Rush Limbaugh touting the Powell doctrine while criticizing Bill Clinton’s excursions in international relief and intervention. “What’s the exit strategy?” Limbaugh would say. And: “The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things; the military is not a meals on wheels to the world.”

9/11 changed everything, I guess. I don’t really believe that platitude, but I’ll repeat it for the sake of argument.

On a national, political level, our primary goal in Iraq is entirely selfish: the hope is that our intervention in Iraq can make the world safer for Americans, and in the process we can kill a bunch of people who dislike America and want to kill Americans. That doesn’t mean that on a personal level, a soldier can’t honestly wish to make a difference in a country that in living memory has never known peace or freedom.

However, a soldier ought to fully understand the cause he is serving: both the political cause and the idealistic cause. I’m not sure Mr. Pottinger gets the political part of it. In a statement that left me scratching my head, he says, “I’m not an uncritical, rah-rah American. Living abroad has sharpened my view of what’s wrong with my country, too. It’s obvious that we need to reinvent ourselves in various ways, but we should also be allowed to do it from within, not according to someone else’s dictates.”

What I found disturbingly blind about this statement is that previously he implied that America ought be in the business of deposing dictators and foisting democracy on other countries—the exact opposite of self-determination. Yet here, when considering how America itself ought to grow and change, he determinedly rejects the notion that anyone but Americans ought to go about the business of cleaning up our own kitchen.

Does he not see the contradiction in his thinking? Or does he really believe that Americans have a right to decide what’s best for everyone else in the world, but by God no one in the world will tell us what to do?

I admire Mr. Pollinger’s patriotism and his willingness to give up the easy life at age 31 and take a different, difficult path. He is a braver man than I. Tomorrow, he will be commissioned a Second Lieutenant and probably shipped to Iraq. I hope to read more of his writing from the war zone, and it will be interesting to see how or if his attitude changes once he experiences the war first hand. I pray he makes it through intact.