Posted on 04/03/2003 8:57:57 AM PST by Trust but Verify
Last Thursday a “peace” rally in Madison drew 200 to 300 people, carrying signs that said “Sociologists for Peace,” and “Drop Bush, Not Bombs.” Apparently, it was peaceful until demonstrators began burning Army recruitment pamphlets outside a recruitment center.
Afterward the protesters complained about the police use of pepper spray. In Iraq, soldiers were putting on chemical suits in a howling sandstorm.
I’m reminded of the sign I saw the other day that said “Imagine Peace.”
Reading it, I think: “Pretend Peace.” Some people pretend. Others make it happen.
At last weekend’s protests, demonstrators staged die-ins, smearing their faces with blood. Half a world away, young men and women the same age actually died. As columnist John Kass noted, other soldiers’ faces were smeared with blood. Their own blood, not pretend.
The protestors, of course, imagine themselves committing acts of high principle, moral courage, and sacrifice (some actually skipped class).
They don’t seem to notice how hollow, tinny, and fake it all seems. Maybe they missed the ironic contrast: the difference between pretend and real, the distinction between the moral courage of “seeming” and the moral courage of doing; between being willing to sacrifice your GPA, and being willing to sacrifice your life.
On the one hand undergrads at die-ins, carrying signs about Iraqi children; while soldiers their own age are taking fire while trying to deliver food to actual Iraqi children. One group exercises their right of free speech; the other makes it possible. (How many countries do you think have been liberated by “Sociologists for Peace”?)
And amidst the shrill denunciations of U.S. aggression, the implacable silence of the protesters about the murder of Iraqi citizens by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Silence over the use of women and children as human shields; silence over the use of rape and torture as instruments of policy, outrage only for American mistakes or crimes.
***
History has a way of clarifies what’s real and what’s not. It also changed our understanding of things like courage and heroism.
As the faces of the extraordinarily professional dedicated soldiers, sailors, and airmen are broadcast from the Persian Gulf, there is an element of discovery, even surprise, because they come from a world and set of values that has generally been off the radar screens of the sorts of people who shape opinion in modern culture.
The people who edit newspapers and produce television news shows don’t travel in the social circles where children decide to go into the military rather than to college; they know very few young people who decided that the sacrifice, grit, and danger of the Marines was more attractive than a study abroad course from Bard College.
Author Frank Schaeffer writes how awkward it was when his son John decided to join the Marines.
“It would be unlikely that any of my friends in Boston, New York, for Los Angeles would actually know of any Marine serving,” he writes. “These days our kind did not mix with such people.”
Note: “our kind” and “such people.” Among his set, anyone at a cocktail who began talking about duty, honor, valor, would be greeted with eye-rolls, side glances and knowing smirks.
“It would be far more likely,” wrote Schaeffer, “that they would have a daughter working for the Miles Foundation – I happened top read a piece about this foundation soon after John signed up – whose mission was, according to the Times article, to ‘study sexual violence in the United States armed forces.’ In our community, a son or daughter getting a job of monitoring the military about alleged sexual impropriety would be considered a far more respectable career choice than actually serving.”
It is even worse in a community like Madison, which prides itself on its tolerance, open-mindedness, and commitment to non-judgmental egalitarianism, but where the military is regarded with a barely concealed sneer.
Madison celebrates the courage of chanting slogans on Bascomb Hill, but clings to the stereotype of the military as made up of macho, country-western-listening, gung-ho, possibly rabid Southern rednecks. It’s an attitude of moral, cultural, and even class superiority, that comes uncomfortably close to snobbery, even for liberals.
But those stereotypes are not faring especially well under heavy fire from the reports from the front. Instead we see poised, articulate, professional, and proud young men. They are volunteers – committed to their mission and supremely self-confident, performing tasks of exceptional complexity, difficulty, and danger with courage and aplomb.
Who are these guys?
Each Marine memorizes the Code of Conduct:
“Article One. I am an American fighting in the force which guards my country and our way of life! I am prepared to give my life in their defense!”
“Article Six. I will never forget that I am an American fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free! I will trust in my God and the United States of America!”
They don’t imagine peace. They make it.
"Liberals hate wealth, they say, on the grounds of economic injustice – as though prosperity were a pizza and, if I have too many slices, you’re left with nothing but a Domino’s box to feed your family. Even Castro and Kim Il Sung know this to be nonsense. Any rich man does more for society than all the jerks pasting VISUAL WORLD PEACE bumper stickers on their cars. The worst leech of a merger and acquisitions lawyer making $500,000 a year will, even if he cheats on his taxes, put $100,000 into the public coffers. That’s $100,000 worth of education, charity, or US Marines. And the Marine Corps does more to promote world peace than all the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream ever made."
P.J. O'Rourke
Their banners should read: Socialists opposing the American way
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.