Dulce et Decorum Est?

Hypothetical Question:

A friend is offered a job with the provisional authority in Iraq. The pay is good, but as we have seen on CNN, the danger is real.

As a friend, should you try to dissuade the person from taking the position?

As a patriot, is it wrong to try to keep talented people from helping the American war effort?

When I first started chewing on this nasty little kone (spelling, Big Hominid?) my first thought was Vietnam. It is 1969. My son has “got a letter in the mail: go to war or go to jail.” Do I encourage my child to go risk his life in a war that appears, as of 1969, to already be lost, or do I tell my child to go to Canada? Love and fear for my child and the desire not to see my progeny squander their life in a lost cause would war with teaching your child about obligations to country. If the collective country calls, how can a citizen say no?

My initial response is that this is a harder call than service in World War Two; we could hope for a positive outcome in the Big One AND our civilization’s very life was at stake.
But on the other hand is the need to uphold the social contract; you can’t just say no when society issues a requirement.

But the fact that the draft was involuntary makes this a poor analogy to the current situation. The hypothetical friend is volunteering for the assignment.

Shouldn’t we as a society applaud people who are willing to sacrifice for the greater good? We need heroes like Pat Tillmon to remind us of our better natures and the price of our freedoms. This concept is an easy one in the abstract. It is easy to praise strangers who heed the call of flag and duty. But when it comes to a friend, your natural fears and concerns shoulder aside the abstract patriotism.

Hell, if you will permit me to divulge a dirty little secret from my closet of cowardice, there is a part of me that thanks God on a daily basis that I had completed my service obligation and resigned my commission before the invasion of Iraq. This is not so much because of a fear of physical harm (though that is real). I was a bit nervous when my unit was on deck for the invasion of Haiti – the possibility of being shot at becomes clear in your imagination as you are packing up your gear to report to the assembly site. But even with that fear, part of me was willing to put aside personal preferences in the service of our nation. Leaving graduate school would have been a major inconvenience, but that was how I viewed it – as an inconvenience. I have a daughter now. The idea of leaving her and not helping her development as a person is obscene – if I was still under orders, I would leave- what choice would I have? - but I would be very, very unhappy. So I look at my daughter and thank God that I’m done with the army thing.
But I also look at my daughter and fear what Muslim extremists want to do to her and her future. If you have read my previous posts, I want Osama and the other Islamofascists dead, dead, dead. So I should support the war, right? Even if it means that I should encourage my friend to voluntarily put himself in harm’s way.

But the real problem is this: I don’t think the war will help protect my daughter’s future. Bush and his pals tried to do the occupation on the cheap and are intellectually incapable of changing their tactics. If Bush stays president, the insurgency will grow and we WILL lose. Big Hominid has frequently observed that the issue of national security will weigh heavily as voters make up their minds in November. I, for one, will pull the lever for Kerry on the national security issue. We need a new approach because the current one, t’aint workin’. And Rumsfeld won’t come up with a new approach. Winning (or at least, not losing and appearing weak to the fundamentalist crowd in the “Arab Street”) is important and I think only Kerry has a chance to win. But I’m in the minority. Most Americans aren’t going to switch horses midstream (to use Lincoln’s 1864 phrase) and Kerry is an awful, smarmy, mealy-mouthed candidate. I think Bush is going to be elected in a landslide. So we are going to lose.

If we are going to lose, and yet can’t get out, I’m reminded of Tom Lehrer’s comment: “beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.” One of the most sobering things about the MacNamara documentary is when he admits that the administration KNEW we were going to lose Vietnam but couldn’t come up with an exit strategy. Can you imagine living with yourself after sending thousands of boys to die for a cause you knew was lost?

Which brings me back to my hypothetical friend. If one believes that the war is lost, than anyone who dies in Iraq is dying to no purpose. If I believe the chance of death is real and that my friend’s death will not advance the interests of my nation in any way, shouldn’t my concern for my friend trump patriotism?

So, if you remove the concept of God and Country from the equation, the only thing left to discuss is money. The occupation authority, operating on the principal of supply and demand, is offering very high salaries. It is moral and just for people to try to provide material comfort for their families. But that material comfort has to be balanced against a loving presence. A trip to Iraq would mean at least a year physically separated from family. This year could easily become two or three as contracts are extended (Yossarian’s experience of extension is not unique, as recently demonstrated by the Wisconsin National Guard) – though a civilian contractor probably has more leeway to refuse an extension than a soldier. There is a small but real chance that the physical separation might become permanent should my friend end up buried in a shallow grave.

So should I ask my friend to sacrifice wealth so that his children will have a greater chance of knowing their father?

Or, is it none of my stinkin’ business? Should I just butt out?

What do my fellow bloggers think? What would you say to this hypothetical friend?