I wouldn't normally do this because I tend to keep email separate from blogging but I was told that my response to this particular article reflects what a large number of us feel when we read tripe like this. So, I'm sharing. You can curse or thank Mark for his insistence on this later. ;o)
And awaaaaaaay we go:
What My Uncle Knew About War
By Dick Cavett
Special to The New York Times
February 28, 2007, 6:03 pm
Tell me, are you too getting just a little bit fed up with our leader’s war Isn’t everybody? Do you actually know anyone who thinks it’s all going to turn out fine? Except that chubby optimist Dick Cheney, of course, who thinks the Titanic is still afloat.
And am I alone in finding our leader’s behavior at press conferences irritating? I mean that smirky, frat-boy joking manner he goes into while, far away, people he dispatched to the desert are having their buttocks shot away. It’s worst when he does that thing of his that the French call making a “moue”; when he pooches his lips out and thrusts his face forward in a way that seems to say, “Aren’t I right? And don’t you adore me?”
As in his case, I was never a soldier, but God knows I wanted to be. Not in later years when my draft number came up for real, but back in my Nebraska grade-school days when Jimmy McConnell and Dickie Cavett watched John Wayne in “Sands of Iwo Jima” at least five times, one of us sneaking the other in free through the alley exit. Then we went home, got our weapons (high-caliber cap pistols) and took turns being John Wayne. The alley was Iwo Jima.
Years later I met Big John. It couldn’t have been better. He was in full cowboy drag on an old Western (studio) street and mounted on his great horse Dollar. He looked exactly as he did in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and it took my breath away. I didn’t just like him, I loved him. I sorta wished I hadn’t liked him quite as much, so I could have asked him, “Duke, how come not you nor any of your four strapping sons ever spent one day in the armed services?” (“I’m merely asking,” I might have added to lighten the tone. Or delay the concussion.)
I didn’t dodge the draft, and unlike our V.P. I didn’t have “a different agenda.” I didn’t have to. I had mononucleosis (imagine how the “nuke-you-lur” president would injure that word in pronunciation) and, my draft board said, they had way too many guys and nothing was happening, war-wise. Sound preposterous? And yet there was such a time.
**********
I have a statement: Anybody who gives his life in war is an idiot.
I guess I left off the quotation marks to let the words have their full effect. They aren’t mine, but I’m related to them. They’re my Uncle Bill’s words, and his credentials for uttering the remark are a shade better than mine.
He may well have been the sole Marine to have survived driving landing barges on three bloody invasions in the South Pacific. I asked an old Marine vet once how rare Bill’s survival was. He was gifted of speech: “I’d say survivors of what your uncle did could probably hold their reunion in a phone booth and still have room for most of Kate Smith.” (We’ll pause while youngsters Google.) “My guess is that your uncle is unique.”
Bill said that aside from knowing that any minute was likely to be your last, the worst part of the job was having to drop the landing barge’s front door so the guys could swarm out onto the beach. Despite the hail of bullets against that door, he had to drop it, knowing that the front five or six guys would be killed instantly.
The phrase Bill hated most was “gave his life.” That phrase is a favorite of our windbag politicians; especially, it seems, the dimmer ones who say “Eye-rack.”
“Your life isn’t given,” I remember him saying, “it’s brutally ripped away from you. You’re no good to your buddies dead, and when the bullets start pouring in you don’t give a goddamn about God, country, Yale, your loved ones, the last full measure of devotion or any other of that Legionnaire patriotic crapola. You just want you and your buddies to see at least one more sunrise.”
Bill also served on land and experienced something so god-awful that he thought he would go mad: “Tom [his best friend] and I were trotting along, firing our rifles, and I turned to say something to Tom and his head was gone.” (Bill had great difficulty telling this. I guess I felt honored that he had not been able to speak of it for years.) He said the worst part was that while still holding the rifle, the body, now a fountain, continued for four or five steps before falling. He hated to close his eyes at night because that ghastly horror was his dependable nightly visitor for years — like Macbeth, murdering sleep.
By sheer chance I was out on the sidewalk in front of Bill’s house (we lived next door) when he arrived home from the war. I wasn’t even sure it was Bill at first, he looked so much older.
I blurted, “Hey, Bill, welcome home.” He was two feet from me but neither saw nor heard me. I knew the phrase current then. Bill was “shellshocked.” Not the current “post-traumatic stress disorder” or whatever the P.C.-sounding phrase is today. For the first six months he was home, he slept in the yard.
You will think less of me for this, but my friend Jim and I, noticing how poor Bill jumped at sudden sounds, thought a firecracker might be in order. Bill’s training kicked in by reflex. He hit the ground so fast it looked like film with frames removed. And, lacking the standard-issue shovel, he started digging with his hands. He never knew who did it. As for Jim and me, I trust that this will be deducted from our shares in paradise.
Isn’t it the excellent combat chronicler Paul Fussell who gets credit for the phrase “the thousand-mile stare”? It described the look of the haggard soldiers coming back from their first battle as the eager, fresh-faced kids — which they had been a few days earlier — filed past them on their way “in.” By definition, both groups were the same age, but there were no young faces in the returning group. They looked more like fathers than sons.
It amazes me that this bungled war can still be considered controversial. Who are the 28 percent anyway, who think that George W., the author of this mess, has “done a heckuva job”?
The other word Bill hated was “sacrifice.” Sacrifice is something you give up in order to get something in return. What good are we getting from this monstrous error? Cooked up as it was by that infamous group of neocons (accent on last syllable) who, draft-averse themselves, were willing to inflict on the (largely unprivileged) youth of this country their crack-brained scheme for causing democracy to take root and spread like kudzu throughout that bizarre and ill-understood part of the world, the Middle East.
What service is this great country getting out of all this tragedy, other than the certainty that historians will ask in disbelief, “Was there no one to stand up to this overweening president?”
I cringe at the icky, sentimental way the president talks about what we owe to the people of plucky little Iraq. You’d think we all grew up ending our “Now I lay me down to sleep…” with “… and please, Lord, be good to Iraq.” They detest us now, along with just about everybody else. Personally, I don’t give a damn what happens to Iraq, and don’t think it’s worth a single American life. Or any other kind. Haven’t philosophers taught us the immorality of destroying something of infinite value — like a human life — in order to achieve a possible good? I guess not.
For weeks the word “cause” has rolled around in my head, attached to an elusive quote. I found it. It’s from Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (as distinct, I suppose, from Paris Hilton’s “Henry V”) and it’s the part where the king, in disguise and unrecognized, sits at a fire listening to some of his men discuss the next day’s battle and what it means to be fighting in a good cause. One says, “But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, ‘We died at such a place,’ … their wives left poor behind … their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle. … Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.”-------------------------------------------
And now, my response to the friend who sent the article:
I'm sure I'm going to regret airing this but felt compelled since you shared it with me. I appreciate being included though when you express your opinion on this war. I hope you won't mind if I share mine with regard to this war and this article.
I can certainly understand why anyone who dislikes President Bush would like this article. However, even if I didn't like Bush, I certainly dislike articles like this one and here's why:
(1) It is extremely disingenous to compare the experiences of a WWII vet to those of our troops in the current war against radical Islamic extremists -- there was a draft in WWII and many who fought have some very negative and strong opinions, in part, because they were conscripted. If one does not believe in what he/she is asked to do, he/she should not be forced to serve.
My grandfather was drafted in WWII and served as a medic in Patton's Army. He hated every minute of it, as would be expected, and has no friends from that time in his life and, as far as I can tell, he has no sense of honor for having served his country. He has said numerous times that if he had a son who might be drafted to fight, he would send that son to Canada. I respect him because he went and did what this country and our Commander-in-Chief asked him to do. I don't blame him for feeling the way he does about it. Who could, right?
On the other hand, my father volunteered to serve in the Army prior to the Vietnam war. He did two tours -- not "Kerry tours" but one full year each time --in Vietnam. He saw many disturbing things and still has nightmares about them. He was awarded a Bronze Star during one tour which stays tucked away in a drawer. He doesn't talk about it much but still stays in touch with other guys from his years in the service. He honors those who he knew who died in Vietnam every year at the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots reunion. He is proud of his career in the Army but not proud that his reward for faithfully serving in Vietnam was to be spat at by people who disagreed with his choice to fight.
Our current war is being fought by an all volunteer military. These folks are fighting for something they believe in, for something they truly understand -- the need to secure our country's safety and security by dealing with the terrorist threat while it can be pulled together in large numbers in the Middle East before it reaches our shores again. Many Americans who qualify for service are still volunteering to go. While they may have very disturbing memories of this war in the future, just like our vets in every war, we NEED to ensure that those memories are not of death and destruction in vain with no true victory as it was for the veterans of the Vietnam war.
(2) The author taints his column IMMEDIATELY with his strong dislike (dare I say hatred?) of President Bush. There's no credibility there; this man is simply looking for the one or two examples he can find that war is fought not for love of country. Period. Phrases like, "our leader's war," "chubby optimist Dick Cheney," "smirky, frat-boy" are simply personal attacks and have no place in a writing about the seriousness of war. It's insulting and irritating to read things like this because the topic is extremely serious but the author chooses to treat it as less than serious by throwing in juvenile pablum like that.
"It amazes me that this bungled war can still be considered controversial. Who are the 28 percent anyway, who think that George W., the author of this mess, has 'done a heckuva job'?" -- I don't know that I think Bush has "done a heckuva job" but I do know that what we are doing is necessary. GWB was not the "author of this mess" at all. When bin Laden declared war on this country long before 9/11/01, no one paid attention. As a result we got hit pretty hard and everyone was incredulous. Wake up, folks. I do credit Bush with having a sense of REALITY and the perserverance that it will take if we are ever to fully eliminate the threat we face from global Islamofascism.
As far as the war being "bungled?" That statement alone makes it very clear to me that the author's opinion is not borne of his efforts to stay FULLY informed about this war to date. It is borne of listening to the count of casualties on the news and anti-war talking points in addition to his dislike of Presdient Bush. There are people who have been to Iraq who will tell you that the media is failing to report the successes at all. Some don't even recognize this war from the coverage it receives on the news; it is dramatically different from the reality they saw while in country.
(3) There is no person (Conservative or otherwise) on this planet that adores war. ALL of us, myself included, are absolutely mortified by what we ask of our brave men and women in uniform in time of war. Being the daughter of a Vietnam vet and not knowing for sure if my Dad was coming home in one piece or at all during the late 60s, early 70s, I understand probably better than some that we not only ask a lot of our troops but of their families as well. War is as inhumane as it gets for those who fight it and the people who love and support them.
This idea that President Bush likes the war or that "neocons" are somehow in love with sending men and women to risk their lives is nonsense. I support this war because it is in the best interest of this country to secure our future by chopping off the reach of radical Islamic extremists. I don't like what we've had to ask of our troops but I do everything in my power to support them (care packages, letters, communication with representatives in DC to support them when they support our troops and vice-versa, and pro-victory writings).
(4) Finally, this author negated his whole essay with the opening: "Anybody who gives his life in war is an idiot." Why? Well because further down into the essay you find that his Uncle believes that: [emphasis mine] "Your life isn't given, it's brutally ripped away from you. You're no good to your buddies dead, and when the bullets start pouring in you don't give a goddamn about God, country, Yale, your loved ones, the last full measure of devotion or any other of that Legionnaire patriotic crapola. You just want you and your buddies to see at least one more sunrise." Amen to that, by the way -- Survival is key in war for WHATEVER reason you choose. Making the whole essay just another meandering, Bush-hating diatribe disguised as an essay on war. Nonsense.
So, as I said earlier, I'm sure I'll regret this later... you guys are just about all on the same page with regard to the president and the war, I think. I may be one of only two amongst you who sees the absolute need for what our country is doing right now abroad, who believes this war will take us to many nation states over many years before it's over, who likes the character of our President, and who will hit the streets at every possible opportunity to stand in support of victory, our troops, and our president.So, am I alone here? I checked the NYTimes site and this is one of the most emailed articles from their site... I guess I may just now be in the minority (again, as in most of my opinions unfortunately).
(Hat tip to Art for sending the article and sparking one of the most circular, frustrating, and futile email discussions I've ever had when fencing with Libs in the arena of ideas. Chalk up one for a stalemate.)
Comments
Most people would infinitely prefer to face any risk or hardship should a direct threat to their family be demonstrated, few would do anything if the threat is abstract or distant. Have to admire those who are willing to face these things for the rest of us. Glad we have the leadership that recognizes what must be done and takes the best care possible of those it sends to do what has to be the worst kind of job.
I truly appreciate those who have put themselves in harms way for everthing I care about. Whatever I can do to support them is good with me. Thanks for the reality check.
Your writing is stimulating and a treat to read, wish you had a regular column.
Did we go to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein had attacked us? President Bush said we did not. If we did not go to war in Iraq for that reason, then why are we still there?
None of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghanis. We attacked Afghanistan because it appeared that the hijackers had trained there. We all agree that Hussein himself was not involved in the planning or execution of the attacks on our soil on 9/11/01. However, Iraq (and Russia for that matter) had weapons that could have been sold into the hands of al-Qaeda. There was some evidence that Hussein was leaning toward doing just that. There is also evidence of a training facility for terrorists in Iraq. Traces of biochem weapons were found in the soil there.
We went into Iraq to prevent more lethal weapons from falling into the hands of al-Qaeda. We are still there because our toppling of Husseing has left a power void. Until that country is stabilized we must stay there. Watch the CENTCOM reports and blogs from Iraq and you'll see that progress is being made.