Peacetime in America

I read Joe Klein's piece in Time magazine this week. The title is The Danger of Yellow Ribbon Patriotism. He begins by laying out the differences between our military and the general population. He lauds the discipline and service of the military and contrasts that with the way the rest of us are living. Klein calls it the "perpetual American Mardi Gras." The point is that we aren't living like there's a war going on. We continue to spend everyday thinking about new cars and new clothes and the new flavor of cappuccino at Starbucks while young men and women are giving their lives in a desert country on the other side of the globe.

Klein then slips into the old familiar verse of "Bush failed" and it goes downhill from there. He mentions Cindy Sheehan and he glosses over her "naive politics" as he makes the point that Bush should be attending the military funerals and sharing the grief of the military community with the American public. Maybe so.

I was struck by two things in this article. First was the disparity between our soldiers and our civilians. Surely, one of the reasons that I have some insane, irrational desire to sign up and go overseas to fight for our nation is that I'd rather align myself with those men and women of the military than with the pouty, indulgent, children that comprise so much of America. Several soldiers coming back from Iraq made comments about how nothing over here has changed. One commander who had served in Iraq is quoted in the article saying, "I lost five lieutenants in a year. I collected body parts. I don't know how I'll ever get over that. And you just get the feeling that the rest of the country doesn't understand. They're not part of this. It's peacetime in America, and a few of us are at war."

Second was the gravity and beauty of the memorial services held for fallen soldiers in Iraq.
"There's no coffin, just the inverted rifle, boots and helmet of the fallen. We call the roll, up to the name of the missing trooper. We call his name: Specialist Doe. Then a second time: Specialist John Doe. A third time: Specialist John R. Doe. And then taps is played."

I agree with Klein in that we civilians, living comfortably stateside, should be somehow... engaged. We should be buying War Bonds or attending to the military families who've lost loved ones. We should be finding ways to serve our country and Bush should be calling us to it. We should be ashamed that our culture is so appropriately described by the words "perpetual American Mardi Gras."