My Son and War

I read this article in the laundromat yesterday. I found it to be a powerful indictment on "Military Families Speak Out." It is not online at the American Legion Magazine Web site, so i typed it in. 'Pod

My Son and War: A once-skeptical father shares his perspective on military parenthood.

I write novels for a living and never served in the military. My two older children did the expected: Georgetown and New York University. Our kind - higher-education-worshipping denizens of the North Shore, north of Boston - rarely enlist these days. In 1999, my youngest son, John, was the only senior graduating from his exclusive private high school to join the military. As I write, he is in the Middle East on his second deployment as a U.S. Marine.

After reading an opinion piece I wrote for The Washington Post - about the wrenching adjustment I made from ambivalence toward our military to proud support for my Marine - Gen. James L. Jones (then commandant of the Marine Corps, now chief of NATO), wrote to me, "There has been a 'disconnect' between the men and women who defend our nation and those who are the beneficiaries of that service." The "disconnect" to which Jones refers is illustrated by the contrast between most parents of military personnel and Americans who will not even allow their children's high schools to give their names and addresses to recruiters.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required to give the names of graduating students to recruiters. Some parents find it unbearable that their children might be asked to even consider serving. In a New York Times article, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says, "Students have a right to not be bothered by agressive military recruiters." School-board members in the San Francisco area said they were working to thwart the "dangerous" law.

Apparently some parents, failing to thwart the recruiter and their child's choice to serve, never reconcile themselves with their feelings about military service. An antiwar organization called "Military Families Speak Out" was formed in 2002 by parents and relatives of servicemembers. Speak Out claims to represent military parents against our liberation of Iraq. The Group's Web site is linked ot a grab bag of anti-globalization and pacifist groups. Speak Out exploits an emotional antiwar tactic: it prints letters on its Web site from frightened parents and children of soldiers pleading with the president to let their mommies, daddies, sons or daughters come home.

What are the factors contributing to the existence of groups like Speak Out? Fear is an obvious reason. But a number of other underlying factors exist. Class is one; the rise of anti-military and anti-traditional-male, politically correct ideology is another.

At one time, our military was drawn from a true cross section of society. Even the Ivy League contributed its fair share - until my generation came along. We were the "60s generation." Some of us served. Many, including me, did not. Vietnam was our excuse. I say excuse because since that war ended, the upper classes - especially the most educated - never regained any sense of moral obligation to serve, let alone the desire to see their children volunteer.

Harvard's memorial wall tells the story. It has many names form World War I and World War II on it, a few from Korea, a handful from Vietnam and none since. Now it's rare to find members of Congress who voluntarily served, much less their children.

The absence of the educated and wealthy elite from our military exacerbates the sense that something un-American and unfair is going on when "my kid" gets sent to war and "rich kids" do not. A country where fairly shared sacrifice is the norm might be less apt to breed groups like Speak Out.

What of the second factor, the rise of anti-military and anti-traditional-male ideology? Before my generation took its turn at the raising and education of children, oversolicitous, hand-wringing "soccer moms" wailing "Be careful!" were nowhere in sight. Winston Churchill and Gen. George Patton were heroes, and no one use the word "sensitivity" except when describing a rash to their doctor.

Patton would not recognize most of today's pool of potential male recruits. I say "male recruits" because while females serve and serve well, it is the role of boys in our culture that best represents our elite's change in attitude about service and, more fundamentally, about the traditional warror role of young men. I believe this shift has something to do with the climate that produces a type of military parent who wants the military to do anything but fight wars.

What kind of boy would be drafted into Patton's army today? Today's 17-year-old potential recruit - let's call him Gabriel (fictitious name) - is an obese, Ritalin-oppressed young man, soft as a Twinkie. The post-'60s, anti-traditional-male and anti-military views of our educated elite have played a role in shaping Gabriel. He only knows about what were once called "boyhood" or "manly" experiences via grotesque video games and other electronic adentures he vicariously undertakes from a snack-littered couch. If he ever got punched at school, the other kid was suspended for violence. If his teacher spanked him, she was fired or maybe jailed. If Gabriel ever read "Huckleberry Finn," he related to the robust protagonist the way a chubby goldfish trapped in a small glass bowl might gape incredulously at a 600-pound Blue Fin slicing his way through the open ocean.

Unlike teachers of the World War II era, too many of Gabriel's instructors see no virtue in martial skills, let alone military service. His teacher is most likely a politically correct, speech-code-sensitivity-enforcing do-gooder trained to make sure Gabriel does his best to behave like the girls in his class. Gabriel's teacher has commanded Gabriel to have "high self-esteem," for what reason or for what acoomplishment he's never been told. "Force never solves anything," he or she has told Gabriel. If Gabriel's teacher ever mentions the military, it is with a shudder and perhaps a condescending smirk.

The smirk was momentarily replaced by a howl of terrified dismay when 19 hijackers killed 3,000 Americans one bright morning. Suddenly Gabriel's teacher's progressive tolerance of everybody and everything - except traditional males - evaporated. Gabriel, his teacher, and maybe even Gabriel's parents looked around, as if waking from a dream, and fervently hoped there were a few good men and women selfless and strong enough to shoulder an 80-pound pack and sling on an M-16 to defend the rest of us.

There were. Not all young men and women are "Gabriel," and even some who once were, volunteered to be mentally and physically "readjusted" by their drill instructors from "nasty civilians" into America's finest warriors.

We went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The military performed brilliantly. But the war was not over in 15 minutes. It wasn't cut to the pace of a TV commercial. Disney had not supplied a happy ending. Our elites did not like to see our military force used. Our war was fought on the ground, not with cruise missiles. Our attention wandered. Some military parents grew impatient. When where their children coming home? What the hell was this word "sacrifice" supposed to mean?

How far will Speak Out go in bedding down with the rabble of America-haters that inflict themselves on the rest of us through the worldwide peace movement? Would the founders of Speak Out have walked out on the Columbia University associate professor [Nicholas DiGenova] who, according to The New York Times, told thousands of students and faculty at a "peace teach-in" in March that he would like to see the United States suffer "a million Mogadishus"? Maybe members of Speak Out don't go that far. But, as the parents of military men and women, they sure have some strange bedfellows.

Like myself, most military parents honor the fact that our children took an oath to serve. Most of us are more patient than members of the chattering classes who write editorials about how our American policy is failing in the Middle East. Most of us know that even if it does fail, we must still try to transform the breeding grounds of hopelessness, terror and oppression into places where freedom and human rights are given a chance. Most military parents know that World War II lasted almost five years. Germany took 20 years to reconstruct. We still have troops in Korea, Japan and Germany. We know that the Middle East is a complex mess and that the chaotic "crescent of instability," stretching from the horn of Africa through the Middle East and all the way to Indonesia, cannot be allowed to continue breeding violent anti-American terrorists.

My Marine has my absolute support, even though I feel sick at the thought that he could be hurt, or worse. I pray my way through each day and many lonely nights. He is engaged in a noble undertaking. I think most military parents feel as I do, though maybe the press doesn't quote us as often as it trumpets the fears of a few oversolicitous hand-wringing military "soccer moms" (and dads) wailing "Be careful!" as their sons and daughters try to defend us. I hope such parents come to understand that they are putting our children at risk by making us look weak and divided to terrorists who already dismiss us as soft.

Frank Schaeffer, son of the great Christian writer/missionary/teacher Francis A. Schaeffer, had an epiphany of sorts when his boy joined the Marines:

My Heart on the Line
Frank Schaeffer

Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry.

In 1999, when the barrel-chested Marine recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in the way. John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men with straight backs and flawless uniforms. I did not. I live on the Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping North Shore of Boston. I write novels for a living. I have never served in the military. [Mountaineer's note: In case anyone wonders, Frank couldn't have served even if he wanted to, as he had polio as a 2-year-old and wouldn't have passed a physical]

It had been hard enough sending my two older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John's enlisting was unexpected, so deeply unsettling. I did not relish the prospect of answering the question "So where is John going to college?" from the parents who were itching to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard. At the private high school John attended, no other students were going into the military.

"But aren't the Marines terribly Southern?" asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch following graduation. "What a waste, he was such a good student," said another parent. One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should "carefully evaluate what went wrong."

When John graduated from three months of boot camp on Parris Island, 3,000 parents and friends were on the parade deck stands. We parents and our Marines not only were of many races but also were representative of many economic classes. Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in the backs of pickups, others by bus. John told me that a lot of parents could not afford the trip. We in the audience were white and Native American. We were Hispanic, Arab and African American and Asian. We were former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned with battles' names. We were Southern whites from Nashville and skinheads from New Jersey, black kids from Cleveland wearing ghetto rags and white ex-cons with ham-hock forearms defaced by jailhouse tattoos. We would not have been mistaken for the educated and well-heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John's private school a half-year before.

After graduation one new Marine told John, "Before I was a Marine, if I had ever seen you on my block I would've probably killed you just because you were standing there." This was a serious statement from one of John's good friends, an African American ex-gang member from Detroit who, as John said, "would die for me now, just like I'd die for him."

My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy. When the guy who fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it. His younger brother is in the Navy.

Why were I and the other parents at my son's private school so surprised by his choice? During World War II, the sons and daughters of the most powerful and educated families did their bit. If the immorality of the Vietnam War was the only reason those lucky enough to go to college dodged the draft, why did we not encourage our children to volunteer for military service once that war was done? Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean?

I feel shame because it took my son's joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future "greatest generation." As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is my heart. link

His book is "Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps"

I graduated HS in 78. My friends were absolutely stunned when 3 years later I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

At the time, I couldn't really articulate why I did it.

Now I can. My life was directionless at the time and even though I didn't know it I was craving some real self discipline. I had no idea how to get it.

My next door neighbor was a Warrant Officer who did two tours in Viet Nam and after a few quiet conversations with him I drove myself to the recruiters office.

My dad, who was drafted into the Army in '65 was prettty quiet about the whole thing. "Just take as much extra training as they offer you, no matter what it is. It could save your life someday."

That was damned good advice. He was right.

To this day, I know of only one other person who joined the military after High School. It's a shame. I'll say it to this very day. The Marine Corps most likely saved my life.

Semper Fi.

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