Notes from the Peaceful Side

I once worked with a man who often would stop by my cubicle to discuss things of a military nature. He had never actually been in the military, but he was well read on the machinery and implements of war. In several of our conversations I remarked that I am always amazed at how humans are so good at inventing ways to kill each other. He never responded or reacted to such comments.

Several of my high school classmates joined the military. One became a well-decorated marine, and another became a Navy SEAL. Both of them were--and probably still are--quite knowledgeable of how to kill people. Some people might consider these men warriors. I was in the military, too, but on the peaceful side of things. I never learned how to kill people, though I came to understand that the aircraft carrier I was on and the ships we traveled with carried enough weaponry to effectively destroy great swaths of land, large numbers of people.

I have watched the TV news and read newspapers for as long as I can remember. When we lived in Illinois, I watched Walter Kronkite, and I read the Chicago Daily News. I remember the TV news broadcasts during the Vietnam War, how the newscasters would each day announce the number of US military personnel killed in that war. When we moved to California, I probably watched different newscasters, and I read the Sacramento Bee (fairly liberal) and the Sacramento Union (very conservative). The Bee is still around, but the Union stopped publishing years ago.

I am not sure of why I went into the navy. I suppose I had nothing else to do after high school, and perhaps I'd forgotten the significance of how many people were killed in Vietnam. I had a great time while in the military, really; I got to travel a bit, to meet some good people, to develop a certain confidence when confronted by new situations that involved a certain amount of stress. Once, a photographer I knew on the ship had just returned from a helicopter ride from where he took a picture of our carrier group cruising smartly through a calm sea. He showed me the photo and said, "Makes you want to go kick some ass, doesn't it?" It did. Maybe that's how young men think.

During and for some time after the Vietnam War, people who were or had been in the military were often ridiculed. I think this was more of a reaction to the War itself and not to the people. Those men and women simply had the misfortune of being the most visible targets. Things are different now. The wars we have started and fought in the last couple of decades have, for a large portion of the population, been quite popular. So, we both literally and figuratively applaud "those who serve" in one remote region or another. Everyone in the military--the clerk and the sniper alike--is now a hero. We are encouraged to "Support the Troops,",to embrace those who "fight the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here." Some people call this "patriotism."

War, of course, has been profitable for a long time. Until relatively recently, much of California's economy flourished because of the defense industry that developed here after World War II. There is good money in new weaponry. My brother-in-law asserts that the defense industry and certain people in the government, and companies such as Haliburton, are actively finding ways to create more conflicts or at least to keep the current ones going, though I am less cynical. Or, perhaps I am still somewhat hopeful and optimistic.

I still watch the TV news, and I still read newspapers. I also read a lot of things on the Internet, and I listen to news on the radio while in my car. This means that I see and read and hear a lot about war, about various groups of people wanting to kill other groups for one reason or another. The drumbeats of war seem to be everywhere, part of our normal human existence. And I find this cacophony nearly overwhelming these days. I'm torn between staying informed about what's going on in the world and dropping into blissful ignorance.

I don't think that going into the military is necessarily a bad thing, and I don't believe that there are not times when military action is called for. But I also don't believe that going to war should be easy. As a nation, we are now considering killing people in Syria because, as some believe, the Syrian government killed some people there with chemical weapons, weapons that President Obama and others have labeled as weapons of mass destruction. Obama has made his case to Congress, which apparently has told the President that a limited use of military force is okay. The international community, however, has resisted, and I do not think this is a bad thing. The decision to kill people should be difficult, and it can be just as patriotic to say "no" as it is to say "yes."

When President George Bush and his administration wanted to beat up on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, more people should have said "no" or at least been more loud about asking "why." We went there, apparently, because Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate threat to the world at large. Hanz Blix, a UN weapons inspector, said there were no weapons of mass destruction there, but this apparently didn't matter. Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush's Secretary of Defense, was adamant that those WMDs were there, though. And photographs of Rumsfeld being chummy with Hussein during President Reagan's tenure are not evidence that the two men were actual friends, of course. This was at a time when Iraq and Iran were engaged in fisticuffs, when Hussein was apparently using chemical weapons in the conflict. The US did not like Iran then, just as later the US wouldn't like Iraq.

As I have gotten older, in many ways I have become less conservative and less afraid. I have also become more of a pacifist, more reluctant to support this or that military conflict. And this has not been an easy transformation, for I am not so ignorant to believe there are not truly evil people in the world, and that some of these people have no qualms about ending this or that life. Those who truly support a war should be first in line to fight it, to encourage their sons and daughters to fight. The 1960s band Country Joe and the Fish sang, "be the first one on the block to have your boy come home in a box." It's a great line. Then again, maybe we should all read or re-read Johnny Got His Gun and Slaughterhouse Five and To the White Sea. Throw the bible in there, too.

All in all, I remain somewhat hopeful that things will be resolved in a way that does not involve cruise missiles and blowing people up. How hopeful? Maybe 40 percent, though that number might edge downward in the near future.