When people ask me if I believe in the war in Iraq, my first reaction is to quip, “Do you mean like I believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus?” Many students feel that this is an unjust war, that we are victims of some secret cabal within the “Beltway” to conquer Iraq for the greater glory of Halliburton. Others say, with near jingoistic pride, that this is America at its best, saving the world from evil. I wonder, how many of them are parents?
As a parent I do not see the flag waving or the machinations of old men. I see the “black boards” in the library, with the total numbers of the dead, tallying the “butcher’s bill” with the devil’s own arithmetic. Each one of those is a life cut short, abbreviated by violence. Each one is a funeral, a family in grief, and a future denied. What strikes me is how young they are; 19 and 20 year-olds fighting and dying in a land so very far from home. All I see is the phenomenal illogic of waste.
Ours is not the first generation to see the devastating cost of war. During the Civil War, whole towns were depopulated of their young men, as massed infantry faced withering fire from high caliber rifled muskets. In the First World War, hundreds of thousands of men died from gas attacks, and disease. In each generation, those young men, and women, who in the prime of their youth, shed their blood across the world’s battlefields, paid the highest price.
How many generals or congressmen die in war? Not near enough in my opinion. Wars are started by old men, and fought by young men. They are paid for in our dearest blood. Anyone who has ever heard the innocent laughter of a baby, and understood the heartfelt glee it expresses, could never order the deaths of thousands. Though war has been a human preoccupation since we climbed out of the trees, it is our most malevolent creation. At the end of the day though, it becomes the necessary crux of civilization, around which our technology and science has evolved.
General George Patton said the goal of war is not to die for one’s country, but to make “some other poor son-of-a-bitch die for his.” Many great men have pontificated on war in the last 10,000 years of civilization, but I have always thought that this one phrase has summed up the essence of armed conflict.
Yet these young men and women that have paid the final price were soldiers. They accepted the challenge to wear a uniform, and the responsibility that goes with it. I am humbled by their sacrifice. That they went into harm’s way so my sons won’t have to makes me realize how precious the price for our security is. I hope that their sacrifice inspires our Iraqi allies to make a serious attempt to seek peace and stability within their nation. If not, then the price that we have paid for their freedom was too high.
