Recently my wife and I heard a loud noise that woke us from our sleep at 2 AM. My wife grabbed me and asked "Is that someone trying to break in?" Since we live on the ninth floor of a doorman building in New York City I responded that, if so, then the doorman must have been at the very least incapacitated, or possibly even dead. I added that the intruder might very well be making his way up the nine floors robbing each apartment as he ascends. My wife found little humor in my comments and rightfully so. The noise was indeed threatening and I found myself unable to fall back asleep. The combination of my sarcastic comments and the spooky sound not only prevented my wife from falling back into her slumber but justifiably enraged her. She told me that my jokes were neither funny nor appropriate, a sentiment with which I began to agree. Looking back on it, the only comment I could have made that might have made my wife even madder would have been, "Gee honey, you're right, it does sound like someone is breaking into the apartment. Why don't you go and check while I re-fluff the pillows?" A reasonable man might expect divorce papers to be sitting under his shaving cream the next morning.
No matter how ardently one might believe in equality of the sexes and admonish me for hinting that my wife would be just as capable of handling a potential intruder, at least in my case my wife was justified in telling me to go investigate the noise. I am ten inches taller than she and outweigh her by 75 pounds. She does a wonderful job of stoically suffering through my incessant injuries from competing in judo and Brazilian jiu jitsu thrice weekly so, naturally, the return on investment for her would be for me to go and "practice what I practice," to mangle a phrase. Besides, I would do whatever it takes to protect her and consider myself more expendable in the long run. So we will leave any feminist objections for another day as I am only referring here to the case of my family, not that of any now-insulted reader.
A similar principle holds true with my friends. I will go to bat for any of my friends when they are unjustly attacked. And in the case of a just attack I would at the very least attempt to break up the fight. Choosing my friends carefully, I know that they would reciprocate. Just this past August I went to Rio de Janeiro for the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Masters World Championship with my judo coach, Teimoc Johnston-Ono, a former US judo Olympian and coach at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. Street crime is common in Rio but we both knew that we would happily come to each other's aid in the case of trouble. Likewise, my best man, college football teammate and fellow LRC contributor John Hackney and I once ran into a bit of trouble ourselves. John and I went up to visit Cornell after his acceptance there for graduate school. Having received a graduate degree there myself I insisted on chaperoning him, much like a beaming parent proud of his child's achievement. We arrived late on a Friday night which happened to coincide with the infamous "last day of classes." After parking the car, we set out for food only to be set upon by two engineering students celebrating the end of the school year. And what a school year it must have been for them. Weighted down with backpacks full of books, coke-bottle glasses and calculators with more buttons than a NASA control panel, we still outweighed our attackers by a combined 200 pounds and their punches would have been lucky to hit our knees. While the incident was about as threatening as a nursery school revolt, John and I glanced at each other out of the corner of our eyes with the implicit message of "I've got your back even though these two novice inebriates pose no danger whatsoever." At no point did either of us say to the other, "You take care of it, I'm going to hammer out a white paper regarding violence on college campuses. Good luck while I'm gone!" Our friendship would end on the spot in any such show of egoism.
While the "cakewalk" in Iraq continues its interminable slog, the neocons continue to bleat when they should be over there defending whatever it is that they believe other Americans must be risking their lives for. I would never ask my wife or any of my friends to risk their life for me if I was not willing to risk my own life in defending myself. Imagine this: you are in a convenience store and an armed robber takes you and one other person hostage. You whisper to the other hostage to try to tackle the assailant so that you can make a dash to safety. The net effect might be that you now end up with 1 hostage and 2 assailants as your fellow hostage makes a battlefield conversion.
Those who most zealously support this latest American military action should practice what they preach. The hypocrisy has become mind numbing at this point. If the threat is imminent, take action to defend yourself, your family, your friends and ultimately your country. The usual excuses no longer apply. Sex is no longer an excuse as many patriotic American women have died in Iraq. Age is also an invalid excuse as one soldier who was 65 years old died and numerous soldiers approaching that age have paid the ultimate price. Only a despicable coward would ask others to make the ultimate sacrifice in a time of supposed imminent danger without reciprocating, despite the fact that he might be busy pumping out position papers on military tactics and otherwise pounding the drums of (other people's) war. Claiming that "they volunteered" or "I have a family to take care of" does not absolve one of his duty to defend his patrimony. But duty in the minds of the writers at the Weekly Standard apparently means something else – something that Taki hit squarely on the head – "You do the dying; we'll do the talking."
As if the shirking of one's obligations is not bad enough, one writer, Kathleen Parker (whose war-time experience includes writing "a syndicated column for Tribune News Services") appearing in the October 31, 2005 issue of the Standard does not condone the verbiage in a book written by one of the soldiers recently returned from Iraq. In her review of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army by the "Arabic-speaking Army intelligence soldier" Kayla Williams, the duty-shirking Parker takes Williams' book to task for its coarse language. Let me get this straight. The editors of the Weekly Standard cry incessantly that we invade and occupy Iraq, and that other Americans put their lives on the line everyday in a place that they would never choose to visit let alone live for extended and repeated tours of duty. Then, once the editors get their panties in such a twist they print an article complaining that "an almost 300-page book surely deserves more editing than the stall doors of public restrooms." In feebly attempting to empathize with Williams' experience, Parker adds that "while I understand that war imposes certain hardships…I found myself longing for a Baptist editor around page 42." I don't know Parker's personal military experience but I do know that she didn't learn of the hardships of the Iraq war from any firsthand accounts by the likes of Max Boot or Bill Kristol. And it hardly matters. This waving of the white flag is typical of the "you go fight while I watch from back here" sentiment that suffuses all neocon scribblings on war.
If in fact Ms. Williams' book is too filthy for you then don't buy it. Ms. Parker's review copy most likely arrived free of charge sent by a publisher who might have reasoned that it would receive a positive review in a magazine that has supported virtually every aspect of this war. What a shock it must have been for the publisher to find that the book fell into unsympathetic (and most likely, uncalloused) hands. Less shocking is the fact that the editors of a magazine who demand that others do the "dangerous work" of fighting in combat while they do the "dirty work" of cleaning ink off their hands and keeping the undersides of their desks free of dirt so they can hide there in moments of sheer panic, would print an article condemning language reflecting the horrors and experience of war, experiences that the editors implored other Americans to enjoy firsthand. First the editors hysterically demand that Americans risk their lives, then those same editors complain when a war veteran phrases her experience in language unheard of at Beltway cocktail parties (though something similar may be heard when a printer runs out of toner at the Standard's headquarters and no one volunteers to replace it for all I know).
For those who oppose the war, perhaps the market can correct this attack from the duty-shirkers whose "attack" arsenal consists of complex chess strategies and mean-spirited press releases. Maybe you should buy Williams' book and use it to illustrate the ugly side of war and how soldiers really speak when confronted with an impossibly precarious, life-threatening, daily struggle. Parker and her fellow-travelers will keep demanding that Williams and others like her keep dying. Imagine if in fact my wife had gone to inspect that noise of a few nights ago and confronted an intruder who not only knocked out several of her teeth but also broke a few ribs while I kept the bed warm and dreamily thought about what LOTTO numbers to pick. And further imagine how despicable and cowardly of me it would be to reprimand my wife for cursing at her predicament after she stumbled back to the bedroom looking for help. Maybe that is the kind of behavior that transpires among those who manipulate others like puppets for their own evil ends but it is certainly not the kind of behavior that sustains a family, friendship, country or society.
October 29, 2005
