South Philly Review

Everybody seems to agree that war is a terrible thing. But some are willing to justify it too easily. Others too readily support it once we’re in. No matter how bad a decision is to go to war, there will always be those that view being there justification in itself for continuing it until we “win.” How often have we heard that we must fight to the finish so that those who have died will not have died in vain? The proposition that more soldiers must die for a lost cause in order to validate the sacrifice of those who have already died, is not only stupid; it is outrageously illogical.

I admit that these are the thoughts that went through my head the other day as I once again watched Oliver Stone’s film “Platoon.” Some Vietnam veterans that I once interviewed told me that “Platoon” came the closest of any film of capturing their experiences in that war. Take the time to read Karl Marlantes’ novel “Matterhorn” and then pop “Platoon” into your DVD player. It might not make you anti-war, but it should help you understand why we ought to be more careful before deciding to send troops into war. We ought to make damn sure of what we’re doing. We shouldn’t send Americans off to die for a flawed domino theory as we did in Vietnam. We shouldn’t send Americans off to die without making sure there are really weapons of mass destruction as we did in Iraq. And after nearly nine years in Afghanistan, we should have figured out by now that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are no longer there, and Hamid Karzai isn’t worth one single drop of American blood.

Most of us have never experienced war.We never had to put our lives on the line for a cause we didn’t understand. We never had to stand helplessly by while a friend bled out in some jungle or forlorn hill. I spent a joke six-month tour in the Air Force Reserves back in the early ’60s while the poor kids who couldn’t get a draft deferment were dying in Vietnam. Perhaps I carry around that guilt. Perhaps it is right that myself and others like me should.

Today there is no draft and consequently there are no protests in the street. The wars are fought by the same kind of poor kids who went into the service because they couldn’t find a job, and that same core of patriotic warriors who still believe in duty and country. The rest of us think we are sacrificing when a gallon of gas goes up 20 cents.

I was thinking about how men and women view war differently. Most men who have not served still think of war as a good action film where the good guys win in the end. They don’t search for deeper truths. Most women don’t think much about war unless it involves their own kids. They will tell you they don’t read war novels or watch war films because they don’t like violence. They view war as man’s folly, part of his nature like watching football on weekends. It is kind of the way some males like me view the painful part of childbirth, like something women do, something we weren’t meant to understand.

Sometimes I get disgusted with myself.My history (and it can be seen in some of my columns) has been to reflexively support our wars, whether it be Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. In each and every case, I found that I was wrong, that I accepted the rationale for war too easily. During Vietnam, it took the deaths of thousands of our soldiers and countless civilian casualties and the realization that the CIA had participated in a coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem before I cried, “enough.”

It was only after the story was revealed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before I concluded that we had no business invading a country that had not harmed us. I once thought our war in Afghanistan was the right war. And at one time it was. But al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have fled to Pakistan. Once again we are propping up an unpopular and corrupt government. We kill more civilians with our drones than we do terrorists. We can’t win the hearts and minds of the citizens because they know that one day we will be gone and the Taliban will still be there.

Once again history is repeating itself. We have lost our rationale for a war, but can’t seem to find a way out. The Obama Administration is already fudging its deadline of July 2011 to withdraw forces from Afghanistan. The President says that if we leave too soon, al-Qaeda will re-establish terrorist bases. But what is too soon? This is the longest war in our history. To paraphrase the president, if not July 2011, when?