Posted on 03/28/2003 1:11:13 AM PST by WSGilcrest
A Marine Parent's Letter
By Frank Schaeffer
John called to say it was official.
"I'm going Dad."
"How do you feel about it?" I asked.
"A little nervous," John answered.
A few weeks ago that was how my wife, Genie, and I got the news that our son John would be deployed to the Middle East. We have been dreading this moment, glad that up till now John was posted to bases in South Carolina, Arizona, Florida and Maryland. Young Marines crave adventure We Marine parents pray for boredom. This has been an unsettling winter of deep snow and rumors of war. Iraq? Korea? Afghanistan? Genie is quieter than usual. I snap at her over small things. The ground feels brittle under my feet. John is going to war. Suddenly the most precious objects in our home are three little wire figurines John made. They sit on my computer monitor. One is a man with a quill pen. The second is a reader holding a book. The third is a warrior with shield and sword. John fashioned these figures from the wire fasteners that held the corks in place on three champagne bottles. We drank the champagne at his twenty-first birthday party a year ago. We had the party -- several months after his actual birthday -- when John could get home from his base for a brief leave. Sitting at our kitchen table John twisted the wire with his strong beautiful hands. Then he tossed the little figures over to me with a casual "Here Dad, these are for you." The three small sculptures sum up John for me: poet, student and warrior. In 1999, John was the only senior graduating from the Waring School in Beverly Massachusetts (an exclusive private high school), to consider military service. My friends were sending their sons and daughters to top colleges. My two older children did the expected: Georgetown and New York University. I write novels for a living. I never served in the military. Our kind: white, higher education-worshipping denizens of the North Shore (north of Boston, that is) do not enlist. Before my son joined my attitude toward the military could have been summed up by an editorial cartoon recently published by the New York Times (January 18, 2003). It was of a mock recruiting poster. The slogan ran: "OUT OF WORK? UNDEREDUCATED? NO HEALTH PLAN? JOIN THE ARMY & SEE IRAQ." No doubt to the Times this represented an ironic comment on the policies of the Administration. To me, as the father of a young Marine, it spoke unintended volumes about the condescending attitude that many of us -- especially we of the "sixties generation" -- harbor toward military service. Post 9-11, I doubt the Times would print a cartoon saying: "OUT OF WORK? UNDEREDUCATED? JOIN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT & DIE SAVING STRANGERS." But the Times felt free to stereotype those in the military. Perhaps this is because for most members of our chattering classes, no face of a beloved child leaps to mind when they think about who defends us.
It took my youngest son joining the Marines to teach me that it is not some abstraction called the "US military" that protects us. It is our children. Twenty-two brief years ago, Corporal John Schaeffer weighed ten pounds, three ounces at birth. His damp little head smelled sweet as he nestled in the crook of my arm. The nurse let me hold him while Genie slept. From time to time I pressed my ear against John's chest to listen to his heartbeat. He grew into a gifted poet, athlete, and loyal friend.
John could have gone to any college in the country. So could many of his brother Marines. My son's Marine brothers are drawn from all economic classes and all races. They work in a multicultural meritocracy that puts our best colleges to shame when it comes to equal opportunity and integration, let alone resolve and unselfish purpose. These days most enlisted Marines come from lower middle class homes. Some joined because they sought opportunities and education. Others carry on long family traditions of service. Many are poor and white. Many are African-American or Hispanic. I never hear about the color or class of my son's current roommate at any posting in the fleet. I am only told that such and such a Marine is "an awesome Marine" or that he is not.
Whatever their backgrounds, my son's brother Marines survived excruciatingly rigorous boot camp training because they believe that the defense of our country is worth sacrificing for. In boot camp many underwent a profound change in attitude that put them at odds with the naval-gazing values of the "me generation." Post boot camp, my son's brother Marines' idea of self-esteem is that the Marine standing next to them is more important than they are. Their idea of reality is that there are some very bad people in the world who hate our country and who must be stopped before they kill us. They are prepared to lay down their lives for their fellow Marines and for their country, even for strangers who belittle the military.
Elsewhere in my book (Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps), I have written about my journey from being a reluctant Marine recruit's dad to becoming the proud parent of one of our defenders. In response, I have received an astounding number of humbling and passionately supportive letters and e-mails, over a five hundred in the last three months, mostly from other parents of military personnel.
Barbara S. spoke for many when she wrote to me, "When my son joined the Marines I was stuck somewhere between devastation and shock. Now I am so proud of him." Jan B. said of her Marine officer daughter, "When she gave me the recruiting pamphlets all those years ago, I tried every tack to try and talk her out of her choice. I thought Marines would be anti-intellectual, sexist automatons... I was shamefully wrong."
General James L. Jones (Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, recently appointed chief of NATO) analyzed the reaction of the affluent and educated parents who find a child's unexpected choice to serve hard to countenance. He wrote to me that "there has been a 'disconnect' between the men and women who defend our nation and those who are the beneficiaries of that service." After reading Keeping Faith former President George Bush wrote to me: "Even after 9-11 there are many who look down on our men and women who serve... This is a cultural arrogance."
One letter was from Linda C. the stepmother of Corporal Matthew Commons. "Matt was an Army Airborne Ranger," Linda wrote. "He was on the helicopter that was shot down during an attempt to rescue Navy Seal Neil Roberts [in Afghanistan]. We are devastated and heartbroken but we are also incredibly proud of him. There is a saying, that for those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know. Having lost a beloved son we have given the best we have to offer. For us freedom tastes bittersweet, but it is also strongly laced with gratitude."
In sharp contrast to the parents of military service men and women who have been writing to me, there are a number of 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, phone numbers and addresses of graduating students to military recruiters unless parents request their children be omitted from the program. Some parents apparently find the fact that their children might be asked to consider serving their country unbearably onerous even though their children may refuse not only the phone call but, of course, are under no obligation to join.
A New York Times article (Uncle Sam Wants Student Lists, and Schools Fret, January 29, 2003), quoted Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, as saying, "Students have a right to not be bothered by aggressive military recruiters." In San Francisco's Contra Costa County, the article reported that school officials were looking for creative ways to thwart the law. Speaking of the requirement that his students hear a pitch from a recruiter, a Contra Costa board member was quoted as saying, "It's a dangerous precedent."
The parents who do not want their children disturbed by a recruiter's phone call might benefit from the soul searching I was forced to undertake. They might ask themselves why they expect other parents' sons and daughters to protect them when they are not willing to let their children even consider serving their country.
Perhaps some parents have accepted the caricature of the military as a place for the "undereducated." Maybe, like me, they are understandably afraid for their child's safety. I doubt that they are all principled pacifists. My guess is that many are snobs who do not relish the prospect of explaining to friends that their child is in the military when those same friends are itching to tell them about how their kid just got into Yale.
Not long ago I saw nothing wrong with the fact that little was asked of me or mine when it came to defense. I suffered from a case of cultural arrogance. It is this type of arrogance that has led to a "disconnect" between the men and women who defend our nation and those who are the biggest beneficiaries of that service. This class, money and education-driven disconnect between members of the new American plutocracy and the class of people who usually serve in our military is truly the "dangerous precedent," not a law that merely asks parents to allow their child to at least consider serving their country.
Perhaps it was this disconnect that prompted the editorial cartoonist who drew the "Undereducated? Join the Army" jibe to forget that the job of our military is to implement the political will of a free people and that if a citizen (or newspaper) wants to question some military action then the honorable thing to do is to take the matter up with our elected representatives, not to mock the men and women who are willing to protect the rest of us.
The Times recently printed a long and prominently placed article about Joey Goodwin, son of the well-known historian and commentator Doris Kearns Goodwin. According to the piece, Joey not only graduated from Harvard but joined the Army. (February 18, 2003, To Child of Vietnam War
Dissenters, Recent Call to Arms Rang True) This fact struck the newspaper of record as so unusual -- a Harvard graduate from a prominent liberal family joins the Army! -- that it merited a long story wherein the bemused writer tried to fathom how and why such an extraordinary thing could happen.
The fact that Joey's service was deemed newsworthy makes a far more telling point than did the story. During World War II if the Times had chronicled the lives of every child from a connected, powerful, wealthy, or educated family who volunteered for service they would have had no room for anything else in the paper. The real story, and one our media has yet to meaningfully address, is why it is that since the Vietnam War ended a certain class of Americans feel themselves and their children exempted from contributing their fair share -- proportionate to their numbers -- to the defense of our country. The wall of commemoration at Harvard University provides a visual reminder of how our elite has lost it's appetite for service. There are many names of war dead from WW I and WW II, a few from the Korean conflict and almost none from Vietnam and none at all since then.
These days who is prepared to defend America matters. Three thousand Americans were murdered on 9-11. The rabid enemies of liberal democracy, freedom and civility would rejoice at liquidating every American man, woman, and child. There is nothing to "negotiate" with our current crop of crazed adversaries except the time and place of our deaths or theirs.
As the world's sole superpower we will, for the foreseeable future, draw the fire of all opponents of order and freedom. We stand in their way. The political will of our citizens backed up by our military is the only guarantor of order in the world today. Everyone knows this and many -- like the French -- resent it.
What is our elite's excuse for continuing to embrace the spirit of the 1970s college military deferments? We are now in the age of the all-volunteer military. The Vietnam War is over. Why is the same class of persons who bore the brunt of that war mostly still bearing the brunt of service today? Why is the same class of persons who ducked service in the 1960s and 1970s still ducking service today? What is the "moral issue" now that prevents our elites from doing their share or encouraging their children to do so?
For those who say the "support our troops" while opposing the war in Iraq I have several questions: Have you ever encouraged your child to join the military that you say you respect so much? Have you ever thought of joining yourself since you have such "respect" and "support" for our men and women in uniform? If not, why not? Are you a dedicated and principled pacifist? I respect that view. But if you're not a pacifist I'd find it easier to take your views against the war in Iraq more seriously if you had a kid in the military.
To get a sense of just how frivolous some folks are when it comes to all things military consider this quote from an article in the New York Times (Move to War Leaves Some Feeling Alienated March 20, 2003). Speaking of the fact that many Californians are alienated from support for the war and our military the paper states: "During some lunchtime chatter there has been a longing for President Clinton, a Hollywood favorite, who, the reasoning goes, would never have allowed a war to play havoc with Oscar night, one of the state's most hallowed traditions."
If my son, Joey Goodwin, Jan's daughter, Barbara's son, Corporal Matthew Commons, and tens of thousands of other young men and women were "undereducated" when they signed up to protect us it was only in one
subject: cynicism. It seems to me that the cynicism -- typical of someone that worries more about Oscar night than out troop's welfare -- that colors the attitude of many members of our Hollywood, intellectual, business and media elite toward military service is a far greater threat to our country than an unwelcome phone call from a recruiter.
Shared sacrifice is the lifeblood of a free society. Those who believe that their children should be perpetually exempted from service to our country by some sort of divine right should ask themselves some hard questions.
Perhaps the views of some of the younger members of our privileged elite are changing regardless of their parent's attitudes. Recruiters are making some modest gains in recruiting from the Ivy League since 9-11. Colonel Warren Foersch, a Commanding Officer in charge of the large United States Marines recruiting northeast district wrote told me that in 2004 the military will commission about twenty officers from the Ivy League. This is the highest number in years. It still strikes me as very low. This is no surprise as our colleges continue to be hotbeds of antimilitary bias.
My Marine son tells me that he does not want to depend for his life on someone who is not willingly standing next to him in battle. He is therefore against the draft. Maybe he's right. If the dearth of volunteers from our elites is not to be resolved by the reintroduction of the draft then the situation will have to change because of a sense of shame. I learned that lesson. Now when I think about who watches over us while we sleep, a beloved face leaps to mind. As I look at the boot camp graduation photograph of John sitting on the mantle my emotion is strongly laced with gratitude. My son has connected me to my country. I envy my son's dedication and the brotherhood he shares with his fellow Marines. I admire his big heartedness born of service. I am grateful for my association, through him, with the best people I have ever met. When I see anyone in uniform that young man or woman is my son and daughter His or her father and mother is my brother and sister. John takes my heart into battle with him. I am frightened, sad and proud. I am proud of my son and proud of my country.
Frank Schaeffer (c) March 20, 2003. Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book, co-authored with his son Corporal John Schaeffer USMC is Keeping Faith - A Father-Son Story About Love And The United States Marine Corps. (frankschaeffer.com)
PS. Please feel free to pass this on to any friend you want to send it to. Best, Frank
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