A Pilgrim's Digression

About a month ago, my wife introduced me to something called Yahoo! Answers, a new site where Yahoo! users post questions to which they want answers. Other Yahoo! users respond, sometimes appropriately, sometimes inappropriately (or not at all).

I have found the site to be extremely addictive, but also a bit brain-numbing, in terms of some of the stupidity that abounds out there.

No, by “stupidity” I am not referring to simple ignorance–not knowing something. To me, “stupidity” refers to, 1. Asking a question which implies a desired answer, or 2. Asking a question merely meant to provoke.

As an example of the latter, take this “question” from the Military section of the Answers website:

“Why don’t more people desert the U.S. military?”

Following the question, the asker posted a more detailed explanation which made her point of view and desire for attention abundantly clear:

“I know, the numbers are rising in an incredible speed, giving that those deserters don’t want to fight for Bush’s personal interests anymore and have a problem with raping, murdering and torturing innocent people. Finally someone who listens to their conscience, instead of following blindly a fascist leader. God bless you all and I hope you know that all peaceloving people are supporting you!”

Ah yes, a very insightful question praising deserters from the U.S. military. A question that doesn’t really ask anything out of a desire to learn…a question that merely seeks to provoke.

Provocation can be a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But really, on a website such as this, what the heck does this person expect to “get” out of asking this stupid question? Well, I wrote a reply, despite my better judgment that it was a waste of time:

“I just love a rude question that implies the superior-acting person asking the question already knows the answer!

“They don’t desert because they volunteered for service, which implies a considerable degree of forethought. Soldiers are not mindless thugs. They volunteered because they believe in the ideals the military stands for, thus no need to desert. There may be cases where people join the military, not understanding the kind of commitment it demands, and thus those people end up deserting. But I think the case of deserters is very rare. More often, soldiers are discharged for their inability to cope with military life.

“The interesting thing is that often, these guys who are booted out of the military, like Jesse Mcbeth (the phony who worked with the Iraq Veterans Against the War group), end up exaggerating their military career in order to derive some measure of glory or fame from their dishonorable service!”

Since I consider myself a skeptic in regards to the Iraq War and the War on Terror generally, it may sound odd that I would take the above position with the OP (original post). However, I cannot bear morons, and to me there is nothing more moronic than asking a question to which you think you already know the answer (and really don’t want peoples’ opinions, anyway).

Furthermore, as my friends will attest, I’ve always had this kind of adulatory respect for the military and people who serve. I am the first to admit, I was a bit of a coward when I was of the right age to serve. I considered joining the Navy my senior year of High School, but decided I did not know if I was up to the challenge, and did not want to find out the hard way that the physical demands were too much. Yes, it was mostly the physical training that worried me, which seems kind of silly now.

The result has been that I am now always a little envious of those who do serve. A few weeks ago, President Bush was criticized for saying that he was “envious” of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan (Slate: Bush’s romantic notions about serving). The President commented to a group of soldiers, “It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, you know, confronting danger.”

I can’t criticize the man for that, because in some ways I feel the same way. I’ve read enough about war, including many, many first hand accounts of the boredom, drudgery, and filth (not to mention the occasional near death experience) that goes along with service in a war zone, to know that the romance dies quickly. Yet, like Bush, I like to think…if I were younger, braver, I’d be there, too.

There is great nobility in military service. You give several years of your life for minimal material reward, sometimes enduring long separation from family, friends, your casual, civilian lifestyle, all for goals that often seem more the pipe-dream of an idealistic politician than anything real and tangible. The least you can expect from those who don’t serve is respect for your choice.

I’ve always thought that if my son wanted to join the Navy, like my grandfather, or my wife’s father, I’d be the happiest Dad in the world. When we are in Washington, I make sure we visit the Air and Space Museum, not just because boys in general LOVE it, but because I’d like him to learn to have an early appreciation for the military.

And might I just say, thank God that most young men who sign up for military service don’t desert. Also, thank God they are not as ignorant as I was, thinking the physical challenges were the most difficult part of service. Most people actually do go into service knowing a little more about what to expect. There are always surprises–I know from friends who have joined that the Navy may promise you exotic locales for your service, but often as not you end up chipping paint off the side of a ship. Yet the vast majority of people adapt, and rise to meet those challenges.

In the leadup to the much-anticipated “Petraeus report”, to be delivered next week, it has been interesting to listen to talk radio. Sean Hannity and his cohorts have been almost giddy with anticipation of the success that Petraeus is supposedly going to announce. Last night, on one of the local Washington talk shows, the host kept asking, “What are Democrats going to say if the surge turns out to be working?” As if he expected a meaningful answer from his hand-picked callers.

The conservative talking point is that Democrats and liberals have bet the bank on failure in Iraq, and they will be formally discredited when Petraeus delivers the report of victory that has been postponed four years now. Of course, any suggestion that the report might be exaggerated in its claims of success will be met with derision and hints of lunacy.

Not trust the military to present an accurate assessment of its war effort? Ridiculous! Why would they exaggerate their success?

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It has been a long time since I’ve written about the Iraq war because, honestly, there seems very little left to say. Most people have made up their minds. It is a war that has dragged on now for four years, and opinions have been formed, and myths have been created, spread, and believed.

What is there left to say? I listen to liberals and conservatives call in to talk radio, and all of them are talking from the same script written four years ago.

“Bush lied about WMD” … “If we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them over here”… “We didn’t send enough troops to do the job”…”The New York Times and its media acolytes are giving aid and comfort to the enemy”…”No blood for oil”…

On and on, round and round we go. Same old tired talking points. There is no solution. There is no exit.

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There are several news stories across the Internet today about the “foes” of President Bush’s troop surge plan, who are apparently uniting in an effort to derail the troop increase.

Maybe I should not have been surprised at the opposition from Democrats, but the strength of Republican opposition is really quite startling. I fully support a Congressman’s right to change his or her mind, but really it’s going a bit too far to oppose a troop increase now, when not so long ago many Senators were calling for a troop increase.

Some might say this change of heart on the part of Republicans and Democrats has more to do with hypocritical political posturing than true belief. It is truly disgusting to watch. The proverb about rats and sinking ships comes to mind. One might also think of hyenas ripping apart a wounded animal.

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In his State of the Union speech last night, on the subject of Iraq the President remarked that “We [meaning himself and the American public] went into this largely united — in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work.”

Presidents have to remain ever the optimist, always seeing the glass half-full rather than half-empty; but saying that “we” were “largely united” on the subject of Iraq seems a bit beyond the realm of optimism, bordering on delusional thinking.

That said, I remain willing to give the President’s plan a chance to work. It has irritated me to see many of the same Democrats and Republicans resist a rise in troop levels, who not long ago were complaining about how the President didn’t send enough troops to Iraq initially. I think that among the pols in the Senate and House, there is simply an overriding belief that the war is lost, and that they should distance themselves from the disaster as quickly as possible.

They may be right. In fact, I have very little hope that the “surge” in Iraq can work. Yet I think it ought to be tried, for the Iraqis’ sake. I have always tried to look at the aftermath of our invasion in terms of what is best for the Iraqis. American losses in Iraq are grievous, but hardly as significant as what Iraqis have lost. Perhaps I am taking an overly paternalistic view, but I believe in making right what we have done wrong, if at all possible.

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Last night, President Bush took full credit for the lack of progress in Iraq, nearly four years after he decided to invade.  And among other turnabouts, he essentially set a deadline of November 2007 for the Iraqi government to get a grip on the violence in its country.  To address the errors of the past, the President is sending 20,000 more troops to the country to secure Baghdad.  Additionally, the Generals who have reviewed the plan to end the violence say that it addresses the chief military complaint: that there were too many restrictions placed on American troops.

Too little too late?  Probably, yet I support the effort.  I think it’s the last chance to stop Iraq from imploding.  I remain a pessimist and believe the implosion is more likely to happen than not,  but we can’t just let it happen without trying one more thing.  And as yet, no one else has proposed anything better.  A military solution seems like the only option.

As a liberal, I cannot stand on the sidelines saying “I told you so” while the Iraqi people suffer.  I dislike George W. Bush and believe he has been wrong all along, but that is really beside the point.  The Iraqis are suffering, and it is our fault.  The death toll wrought by George Bush’s war is pretty staggering, when you factor in the number of civilian casualties, and the dead from among Iraq’s military and police.

I’ve always thought it disingenuous and callous to count the toll of the war only in the number of dead Americans.  Of course there are going to be fewer American casualties.  In World of Warcraft, a player who absorbs damage so that other friendly players might live is called a tank, or meat shield.  The Iraqis are the American meat shield.

The Iraqis take the brunt of the terrorism, while the armchair Hawks sit back and say, “This war ain’t so bad compared to World War II.”

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My frequent criticism of the Bush administration, particularly on the subject of Iraq, probably gives the impression that I favor an immediate withdraw of troops. Indeed, I often waver on the issue of withdraw, sometimes feeling that the situation is hopeless, at other times feeling that to leave the Iraqis to the the vicious mercies of the terror we unleashed in that country would be unchristian and immoral. The latter feeling usually prevails.

Iraq is not just about American interests, American deaths, or American “treasure,” as the pundits so drily refer to the billions, if not trillions, spent on Iraq. Iraq is about the Iraqis: what are their lives worth? What is their freedom worth? Far more Iraqis die brutal deaths every day than Americans, yet all we hear is a drum beat of grief over American deaths. No other conclusion can be reached except that but for our actions, our invasion and our failure to secure the country following the invasion, fewer Iraqis would be dying today. So then what then do we do to correct this travesty of a mistake?

I don’t think a Christian can adopt any other position but that any action we take must be judged by what is right by the Iraqis, because so far we have only done wrong by them. The initial invasion was wrong and immoral, no matter what rationalizations the President thinks up at this late date to justify his war of choice. And the occupation and “reconstruction” has been a total disaster, more destructive than reconstructive. So what do we do now, in order to correct our mistakes and leave the Iraqis marginally better off than they are today?

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One of my very first blog posts, back on March 26, 2003, was about being issued a hood and respirator intended to protect us government employees against biological and chemical attack. I called them “gas masks,” but they were actually called “escape hoods” because they were meant to provide one hour of clean air, just enough to escape from the immediate area of a biological or chemical attack.

At the time, you’ll recall, the invasion of Iraq was in full swing. It was a tense period of time. Most people felt that the war was the primary reason we were given these hoods. Some speculated that the government had knowledge of Iraqi terrorist agents in America who were preparing a WMD attack in Washington.

We were supposed to keep our hoods beside our desk, along with a small pack of emergency supplies–flashlight, batteries, foil packets of water–that were also issued to us by the government. I kept mine there for several months, but eventually it migrated into a desk drawer, and finally it ended up gathering dust in a cabinet when I moved to my new office in 2004.

I hadn’t even looked at it or given it a thought in probably two years. Then last week, we were given a date on which to come to a certain room in the building where we could turn in our hoods and receive a new model. I picked mine up today.

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This afternoon, I read in the Washington Post a story about Emily Perez, a Prince George’s County native and the first female minority command sergeant in West Point history. Perez was killed in Iraq while on patrol September 12.

Running alongside the story of this remarkable young woman’s tragic death was an advertisement for the “Mate 1 intimate Dating Service,” complete with sexy pictures of voluptuous women such as Kitten94366, 25, of Washington, D.C., whose body is described as “slim” (another woman whose picture appears in the ad describes her body as “curvy”). “Find girls in your area,” the advertisement says.

The horror of this war is that we aren’t at war, but people are nonetheless dying horrible deaths. What I mean is, America is not a country on a war footing. This is partly due to the fact that there is no draft, and the President has insisted from the beginning that Americans go on about their lives, spending money and preoccupying themselves with entertainment, regardless of what happens in the Middle East.

One of Perez’s classmates at West Point said, “The fact that she’s died — it makes what’s going on in the Middle [East] . . . so much more real. I mean, here at West Point, it’s kind of like Camelot, you know…”

If before Perez’s death the war wasn’t real to a West Point cadet, how could it be real to civilians now? America itself is like Camelot after the betrayal of Lancelot. America is dying, mostly from self-inflicted wounds; and it is a country that does not yet know it is dying.

Nearly every day, I read another obituary for another soldier, or I hear a report on NPR about a soldier’s death, and then I look around me in the malls and on TV and on the Internet, and I see young people happily oblivious to the death wrought by this war. I see a military-age kid on the street, and I wonder, “Has he even thought about joining the military? Does he realize what is going on in the world?”

My wife tells me about college recommendations she has to write for her students, and I think, “We’re not at war. If we are, what are the signs of it?” I don’t see any, not here. Only in the newspapers are there indications that Americans are dying for a cause–what cause, no one can precisely say–and if conservatives had their way we wouldn’t even see those signs, either. The lengthy stories about the death of another American soldier; the (sadly) much briefer stories about the death of “scores” of innocent Iraqis (how many Iraqis have died? will our government ever tell us?); the stories about the failure to reconstruct Iraq and build a peaceful society there; all this would be off the news, out of the newspapers, and off our minds if Republicans had their way. Because death is “bad news.” It drags down morale. It gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

However, I guarantee you that if there were a draft, High School-age kids would have a whole lot more on their minds than how they are going to get drunk and laid this weekend. And how would their parents feel, knowing that instead of going to college, little Johnny or Sally might be drafted? How long do you think it would be before people demanded an end to the war?

Are we at war, or aren’t we? Or are we trying to keep the war on the low down, so the public doesn’t get too riled? Or maybe the American public itself is content to allow a tiny percentage of the population who are in the military to carry this burden completely? I think we are content to slap a magnetic yellow ribbon on our bumper and say confidently “I support the troops.”

This is the extent of our “war effort.” Sure, there are those who participate in programs to provide care packages to troops. Probably the majority of those who participate have a family member overseas, however. The rest of us, myself included, do nothing. For one thing, to repeat myself, I cannot feel the seriousness of this war.

I don’t even get a sense that our President wants us to take it seriously. Again, I think it all goes back to the unwillingess to impose a draft on young men and women. Supposedly, it would be an economic disaster to effectively take millions of young people out of the economy. More than that, perhaps in the back of our Republican President’s mind is the fear that a draft would galvanize our young people and their parents into opposition to the war.

Or it might galvanize them to support the war. Who knows? It will never be tried.

Either way, wouldn’t it be nice to have a population that cared deeply one way or the other? Imagine a young soldier returning home after experiencing deprivation, hardship, loneliness, homesickness, despair, and fear. Imagine such a soldier has seen comrades die brutal deaths. Imagine such a young person has inflicted a brutal death on someone else. He or she comes home, and America seems largely oblivious. We’ve been keeping ourselves entertained, going about our lives as the President asked us to do.

It’s so tragic when an American dies in Iraq. Now who do you think will be voted off American Idol tonight? And did you see that episode of Flavor of Love where Deelicious craps on Flav’s carpet?

There’s a scene in the film The Best Years of our Lives in which a returning World War II veteran is jostled out of his place in line at an airline ticket counter by a cigar-chomping gentleman who declares that his business is most important and he needs to move to the front of the line. Such is America in general, today. Eager to forget the horror, we pat a veteran on the back and then turn our own backs to them.

I can only imagine what our veterans have been through. Books and movies suggest that it isn’t an easy adjustment. We don’t often think of post-traumatic stress as being a result of “good wars” like World War II, but nonetheless, soldiers came home from that war and found it difficult to adjust. Boys with whom they went to school, but who did not go to war, were married with children. Some soldiers came home with drinking problems. One veteran of WWII commented that he felt like a “grandpa” compared with people his own age, 24 years old, who had not been to war. Everyone smiled at the veteran and said how proud they were, but no one except another veteran could understand all that he had seen. And no one really wanted to hear about it. In 1946, people were eager to put the war behind them.

If such was the response after World War II, an unambiguously just war, how much more so today?

Veterans justify their service in terms of defending American values and our peculiarly American way of life. Perhaps they find it ironic that one of those values is the right to ignorance. They are defending a country so carefree and decadent that an obituary for a female soldier who died bravely and unjustly in war can be juxtaposed with an advertisement for an “intimate” dating service. I know the advertisement was probably chosen randomly by computer. Does that really make a difference?

Do veterans ever wonder if their sacrifice was really worth it, after all?

I have often written about the use of the straw man rhetorical tactic by right wing pundits eager to paint opponents as traitors. I don’t think it can be pointed out often enough how the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter achieve rhetorical dominance over their philosophical opponents by misrepresenting and in some cases outright lying about what their opponents believe.

Nowhere has the straw man been used more stridently by members of the right-wing punditry than in their attempts to demonize members of their own party–Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner–for desiring detainees in the war on terror to be treated in accord with the Geneva Convention. In Ann Coulter’s words, treating captives in accord with principles of human dignity apparently means that John McCain wants terrorists to be “treated like Martha Stewart.” When did Senator McCain express this opinion concerning terrorists?

Never, of course. It’s all rhetorical with these people, you see. Facts don’t matter, just how good a rhetorical dig you can get in. Can you pithily and cuttingly express what you really wish the Senator believed? There you have your aphoristic slogan. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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