How Many More Times?

The news item that hit home had to do with the fact that one of the missing soldiers recently found in the Euphrates River in Iraq was from my hometown of Torrance, CA. I didn't know the kid, and my hometown is actually the third largest city in LA County, after Los Angeles and Long Beach, so it's not like there's an intimate, small-town connection, but it's still my hometown. I don't know which of the four public high schools he went to, or if he went to the Catholic school. I don't know if he grew up in the same neighborhood as me, or if his beach hang out spot in the summer was Knob Hill or Avenue C or somewhere else along the Esplanade. I don't know if he shopped at the Del Amo Mall or at the Galleria. I don't know if he was upper class, middle class, or working class, whether he was white, brown, black, or Asian. But he's a fellow Tboy, as me and my old school buddies like to refer to ourselves as, and for me that's enough to make me feel sad that he' s not around anymore. I feel sad whenever one of our soldiers is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, no matter where they are from, but it just hits home more in a case like this. That kid was me just a decade and a half ago, with the future ahead of him, and big plans and dreams to achieve. But now he's dead, and no amount of rhetoric or justification or claims about defending freedom or fighting the terrorists where they live can change that simple fact.

Another thing that hits home is when I see that a soldier around my age, mid 30's to early 40's is killed. I can't help but imagine that he has a wife and kids at home who are counting on him to make it home safely, to come home and resume the life they knew before this war started. They were counting on him to come home and be at next season's little league games, and school plays and dance recitals. They were probably counting on him to come home and clean out the garage or fix something that needed fixing, to be the reassuring father figure, the guy that made the rest of the family feel like everything was going to be allright. But now he's dead, and he's never coming home, and his wife will never be able to have those late night conversations where they plan their kids futures and discuss the next vacation and stress about how to pay the bills and whether they can afford to get a new flat screen TV or if they should keep the outdated one they've got. His kids won't see him at the ballgame or performance, and they won't ever get the reassurance from knowing that dad is home, sitting in his favorite chair, watching a ballgame or taking a well-deserved Saturday afternoon nap.

But what about the soldiers who will make it home alive, without even so much as a physical scratch? The author of one of the all-time anti-war novels, "All Quiet on the Western Front", which is about the original pointless war of this century, the Great War, aka WWI, has a line that is fitting. "Those who escaped the shells, were nonetheless destroyed by the war." Remarque, the author, was referring to what was known as the Lost Generation, those who served in the Great War and spent the ensuing decade of the 1920's confused, disillusioned, and angry. He could just as well have been describing the current generation of soldiers that are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. When these soldiers start coming home to stay, and really have time to reflect on everything, I fear what's going to happen. One of the soldiers who was looking for, and found the missing soldier from Torrance, said, "It just angers me that it's just another friend I've got to lose and deal with, because I've already lost 13 friends since I've been here and I don't know if I can take any more of this."

Our society can't ever let this happen again, we can't let our guard down against terrorist groups, and we also can't let our guard down against overzealous, warmongering politicians that exacerbate the dangerous times we live in. Remember that the majority of Americans supported this war back in the spring of 2003, back when we still felt that we could solve international problems with the policy of bombing and helping. Bomb the offenders into submission, live with the collateral damage, and then help them rebuild their countries. Remeber too that a majority of American voters also reelected President Bush in 2004, despite the fact that the Bush Doctrine of preemption was being exposed as a failed policy and the main slogan coming out of the Bush camp at the time was to stay the course. How many more times will we be fooled? We were supposed to have learned our lesson from Vietnam and from Watergate. Will we learn from this fiasco, or will someone who's just being born today at Torrance Memorial Hospital be the missing soldier in some future war of choice in another twenty years from now?