Discovering Your Place in War

April 9, 2008

I am writing this email from a very personal standpoint, in answer to your question about reserves confronting doubts about participating in war.

Many servicemembers reach a point of being torn between loyalty to their friends and fellows and their conscience about what they are doing.  There are many decisions about how to balance those issues.  Some, like the Appeal for Redress members, remain faithful to their perceived duty while protesting the war they believe is illegal and immoral.  Others turn and refuse to go a step farther in support of war.  I often try to explain to people about the continuum of CO, from the Appeal for Redress people to people who refuse to pay their taxes lest it be spent on war, death and destruction.

It actually happens more with reserves than active duty because of the fact that the reservist doesn't have to confront what their part in the war is very frequently.  They go on weekend drills or spend two weeks in Guatemala building roads and feel that they are doing good, forgetting that the roads are being built primarily so that we or our allies can move troops efficiently.  So a reservist can do just exactly what you have done.  Waltz up to a belief that what you are doing is wrong and then, when not specifically confronted with it, waltz away again.  It is human nature for us to try to ignore the bad effects of the choices we make and focus on the good.  I personally try to ignore my carbon foot print and my collusion with the war through my taxes.

But when you are confronted with it face to face it becomes harder and, indeed for some, impossible to deny that there are no hands that are blood free.  I often quote General Patton who said on the eve of the invasion of Normandy:

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role....Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain .Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal.

He has it right.  You felt by telling the stories of the men and women in the military you would be serving them without harming others.  But the reality is that your stories are used to justify sending men and women to war and back to war again and again.  Your writings ennobled something that is ultimately ignoble.  That is not to say that the men and women are ignoble.  In fact, they are selflessly sacrificing their lives, their bodies, and their souls in the name of something noble—freedom—but in reality for something base and through a base process.

I encourage you to consider writing those stories from outside of the military—the stories of courage in the middle of an insane, cruel and illegal war.  Stories of men and women who are prepared to sacrifice all, but are not real clear for what it is they are sacrificing.

Anyway, I would like to recommend to you a film called "Soldiers of Conscience" which discusses this very issue in what I perceive as a fairly even handed manner.  There may be a screening near you (you can check on their web page at socfilm.com) or you will be able to see it on PBS in October 2008.   It may help you more than a doctor whose job is described by the military as to keep boots on the ground.