- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I love this familiar old argument for its perfect (yet ever-useful) disingenuity: “You sir would like the world to be all neatly black and white: I can be the good guy, and stay home to tend my garden, or be the bad guy, and go to war to kill and maim. I have lived within the shades of grey, and I reject your idealistic and simplistic notions.” Logic IS black and white, sir, and it says, in this case, that if you’re against the war, protest it at least to the extent that you don’t volunteer to participate in it! Your much-vaunted ‘shades of grey’ are politician-speak for hypocrisy, moral ambiguity and all kinds of paradoxes of convenience that, in plain speak, are all about having one’s cake and eating it too. Your stirring speech is a philosophical sand castle with neat little turrets and fanciful towers and crenelated battlements…but all it takes is the ‘idealistic’ foot of common sense to kick the bloody thing down.
Your “I do not consider myself a hero, although I am frequently and earnestly labeled one, and have received shiny plaques and bits of tin and ribbon to say I am one,” is, of course, directly from The Script, but let me posit a truly heroic deed that, while carrying with it a true sacrifice for the doers of the deed, could have saved thousands and thousands of lives: refusing to serve. It’s a far-fetched hypothetical indeed, but imagine if all the boy and girl soldier robots had said NO. As in that sweet old catch-phrase from the late ‘60s, ‘Imagine if they gave a War and nobody showed up?’ The action of refusing would have resulted in jail time (or protracted legal battles) for the first few thousand conscientious objectors, but there’s no way, in the end, the government could have jailed the entire army, and, meanwhile, many of the young men and women in jail as a result would still be alive and all in one piece today (infinitely preferrable, no?), rather than dead and/or dismembered. It’s the kind of thing, like boycotts or strikes, that only works if everyone does it. It could never have happened, of course, and the few heroes who DID opt for this strategy either went to jail or are, as stated, involved in protracted legal battles. But the black-and-white of it is that this simple and quite obviously powerful strategy is impossible because of self-deluded ‘heroes’ like you, CPTMitch, who live in your so-called ‘grey zones’ and strap on those weapons when the old men demand it. And while its great to know (if I am to believe you) that you didn’t use your weapon ONCE while in that far-away country, your unfired bullets are a drop in the bucket compared to the ordnance that was utilized.
What’s ‘black and white’ is your attitude that there was anything good, for anyone, about your being over there in the first place. Iraq (like North Korea, Iran, Haiti, China and various African nations, et al) was a world-class human rights violator that cried out not for Uncle Sam’s corrective fist but U.N. diplomatic pressure. Yes, I know, it would have taken ages to bring about change that way, but the black-and-white of it is that it would have been by far the better solution, even for Iraq itself, and, in any case, unless the issue is oil (ahem), how the hell was it ever America’s business? This all reflects either on your lack of critical thinking ability, or your sheer dupedness, or, more likely, a bit of ‘grey zone’ mendacity. I still strongly sniff that crypto-macho attitude in you, which is NOT merely about you (your problems as an individual are not my concern), since that crypto-macho attitude is the energy source (the oil, if you will) of the volunteer army. Again, which ‘responsibility’ precisely did you honor by being over there? Instead of passive-aggressively lauding your participation in the debacle, you should today be speaking out loudly against (the) War in the most Black And White terms possible: it’s illegal, immoral and irrational. It’s serial-killing on a national scale. Your ethically useless ‘grey zone’ is a Nixonian trope that has been invoked an incalculable number of times to justify all manner of Very Bad Behaviour. Ollie North, Henry Kissinger and G. Gordon Liddy all had their Grey Zones too.
More evidence (pitch-perfect excerpts from The Script) of this dangerous zeal of the Little Boy with a Gun:
“I have looked into the eyes of dead and dying men, helpless to intervene in any meaningful way, boiled with anger and frustration, not only at our enemies, but the leadership who placed us in the situation, and I have wept openly at the tragedy of it all.”
“However, as a soldier who has made a committment to the Constitution of this nation and the principles of that document, my integrity did not allow me to duck out of my responsibilities while I still proved capable.”
“I disagree with the leadership of the nation, but I also volunteered to serve my community, state, and nation. I accepted the rules for that service. We as a nation of rules and laws, and our established system of government--with all its flaws--produced a decision and a course of action, ill considered as it might be.”
Rambo was always against ‘the brass’ too, if you’ll recall. He didn’t talk as pretty as you do, but I think he would have dug where you’re coming from.
