Support the Soldiers, Not the War?

Some amazingly interesting and enlightening mail came in this week as the result of my column last week, in which I questioned the current assumption among progressives that soldiers should not be considered responsible for enlisting and serving under an unelected dictator while fighting a war of aggression. Here’s one from Andy:

to: chet@rall.com

I’ve calmed down now, but I want you to read this anyway, as I wrote it.

Dear Ted,

Your piece on encouraging military desertion upset me greatly because it reveals a lack of understanding. Every last one of those soldiers is already dead. They died the moment they naively signed on that line believing they were doing the right thing. You don’t need peace protesters spitting at you for your soul to begin dying. First come the dreams. Then come the startle reactions, and you realise that the big brave man you once were has gone the day you find yourself curled up in a ball crying like a baby because a firework went off, or you caught the smell of diesel in the air. You get time to think it through in peace as you sit in jail after you nearly killed some poor fool who bumped you in the street, and you come to love the solitude and protection of jail because it is an institution whos simple rules of power you understand. When you return your family are overjoyed to see you alive, they don’t know you are walking dead. Over time your wife will learn to cover the bruises and live with broken bones because she doesn’t want to turn you in, but in the end she will leave you to protect her children whos lives have already started to descend into neurosis, depression and underachievement. But you thank God if your wife was pregnant before you left, because now your sperm, like your lungs, kidneys and liver is speckled with blood and burns like fire with the DU dust slowly eating your body away. If she left because you couldn’t have sex anymore she doesn’t realise how lucky she was to escape the slow burning death herself, or to push your legless deformed living abortions about in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Then you start to realise how they were the lucky ones who died quickly in action. So now you wander the streets and sleep in an alley, unemployed, unable to get medical treatment. Nobody told you before you went that you can never erase or forget those images and thoughts. If the alcohol doesn’t finish you off then the dope or the heroin or the lobotomising tranquilisers, or maybe a bullet to the head from your own pistol will.

Ted, I’m sure you are a very warm and human person, that your intentions are good. I can see that in your cartoons and other writings, and don’t think your own bravery in standing up and speaking out is lost on me. But you clearly do not speak with the sensitivity that experience would have given you. You quote Hollywood films apparently oblivious that their sick, violent culture of lies and hypocrisy is part of the propaganda problem. I think you don’t understand war, the pressures that make the “right thing to do” to stay beside your brothers and endure duty and sacrifice for what you were told is right by those you trust and respect, even though there is a gun at your back as well as in front of you. Since you have a platform to speak and much to say may I humbly suggest you direct your words against the lying, treasonous bastards who send the innocent to kill the innocent for nothing more noble than dirty profits.
Perhaps I’m wrong about you, but you should realise this phoney war has made cowards of us all. These chaps don’t have the same choices, the same degree of free will that we have sitting here pontificating and rubbing our beards. Most come from the poorest backgrounds, for them service is an escape not an adventure, a chance to feel good about something for once. They fall into the hands of the smartest manipulators, psychologists who know how to unleash the evil in a man, but not smart enough to put the genie back into the bottle. All very sad.
On quite another subject, have you ever heard of the artist Banksy who comes from my home town in England? He is a genius. Something tells me you would very much like him.

I do understand that most enlistees don’t possess the experience or sophistication to see past their recruiter’s slick sales pitch (see the world! bomb it!). That’s why I think the armed forces shouldn’t be permitted to enroll anyone under age 30. Wanna bet what that would do to our leaders’ plans to fight more optional wars, just for fun and profit?
I’ll check out Banksy.