In today’s Doonesbury, BD makes the following statement: We all make our own choices.
Those of us who choose to serve don’t demand that you share in our sense of duty.
However, we do ask you to respect it – and to respect the sacrifices we’re willing to make for country.
I’m not sure I agree with that. While I certainly respect everyone’s right to make their own decisions, I’m not sure I need respect the choice an individual makes. If an individual makes a choice I disagree with - or that furthers a policy I disagree with, why must I respect that individual’s choice?
In today’s all volunteer armed forces, at least a significant portion of those serving chose to do so for “mercenary” reasons - for the job, training opportunities, education benefits, veteran’s preference in subsequent employment, etc. If they joined for reasons other than to “defend American freedom”, why does that choice necessarily merit respect?
Of those who joined more recently, in some respect their decision can be viewed as enabling our government’s wrongheaded pursuit of their current path - going along with if not inflaming jingoistic reactionary public support for the war. Again, I am not convinced that the choice of every individual to serve is necessarily worthy of success.
I see the choice of military “public service” somewhat different than the choice to serve - say - as a fireman or police officer." Anyone else similarly troubled by Doonesbury this Thanksgiving morn?
It’s not blanket either/or. Firemen and police are mercenaries too, or can be. I can respect anyone if there motives are honourable and their conduct honorable even if I don’t agree with the cause. And I won’t disrespect anyone making a living in those circumstances if they do it with honour.
Coach I respect.
But blanket respect just because they are in the army? No.
Respect is never an entitlement, even when you put on a uniform. You have to earn it by actual demonstrable service to your country, or your community. There is nothing automatic about joining the military that proves that to me, and there’s obvious evidence that some do measurable damage to other humans and to our stature in the world.
My brother-in-law is going to Afghanistan with the Canadian army (he’s a reservist, I think, it was totally and 100% his choice to go).
I do not respect his choice for a wide diversity of reasons, both political and personal. (Of course, his choice was both political and personal as well, so that’s completely reasonable.) I cannot imagine anything he could do to earn my respect in this regard, which is partly why I feel so negatively about it.
I do respect HIM enough to not tell him this, and I respect his right to make the choice … no matter how much disrespect I have for the choice he made. (I guess it’s like respecting your right to your opinion, even if I disrespect the opinion. Voltaire, and all.)
However, if he asks, I will have to also show him the respect of answering honestly.
There are elements of both truth and fraud. The fraudulence becomes most repulsively obvious when The Leader pours praise and honor on our troops, carefully standing close enough so that some will splash onto Himself.
We cannot peer into another’s heart, we cannot “take his inventory”. We know that many joined up for reasons of pure patriotic committment, others, only join for selfish reasons of advancement. There is no chance we can be wise enough to sort them out. Certainly, it is unlikely that very many National Guard and Reserve personnel anticipated being used so callously as they have been used.
So I think we must offer the presumption, the benefit of a doubt. As a gesture of respect to the unknown ratio of patriots, we should presume that they are all equally noble in their intent. Its not true, of course, but sometimes (rarely!) such a committment can be a generous gesture of inclusion, so long as we know that we are doing it, and refuse to permit the authors of this monstrous stupidity to bask in that generosity. We cannot muster the degree of contempt they deserve.
Servicemen and women are in principle pledged to give their lives in defense of their country. The fact that they are currently serving in the unnecessary fiasco of Iraq in no way diminishes the respect that commitment merits. Nor does the fact that some of them may have joined up for less than glorious purposes; to stay out of jail, for example. Anyone who is risking his or her life (even if only in principle) so I can sit at home in relative security has my respect and gratitude.
Respect the haircut. Respect the machismo. Respect the world view. Respect someone going through all kinds of shit you didn’t go through, for any reason, or no reason. We really don’t have much choice.
I guess that kinda gets at my personal confusion. I am having a hard time separating the principle from the reality. What I consider the reality is that the forces currently in Iraq are doing little or nothing to protect my or any other American’s security.
I acknowledge that we need to maintain some force level. I would hope we did not unnecessarily use it offensively.
And I’m not necessarily opposed to universal conscription - national service that could (but did not necessarily) include service in the military.
I’m having a hard time thinking of a reason to disrespect a fireman’s choice to serve. I guess a policeman might choose to do so for less than laudable reasons. To exert authority might be one. Of course, I do not believe this is the motivation for any but a very small minority of police.
But it seems to me that the reason an individual chooses to join the military affects the respect I afford his decision and resulting service.
Note that I am not suggesting blanket disrespect for members of the armed forces. But I am suggesting that the mere fact of service does not automatically entitle one to universal respect.
We’re in Iraq because of George Bush and friends. Soldiers don’t get to choose where they go. I wish our leaders had enough respect for the troops not to squander them on ill-conceived adventures.
Dinsdale, have you been reading all of this particular series of cartoons in Doonesbury? It has nothing to do with the question of whether someone who disagrees with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should respect those who are volunteering for military service. Garry Trudeau isn’t even addressing those people. He’s addressing those people (mostly well-off) who are in favor of these wars but would never volunteer for military service themselves.
His point is that there are a lot of well-off people who think that the war is just great but who would never volunteer and, what’s more, don’t know anyone who is in the military. They make excuses (according to Trudeau) about how it’s more important that they should get jobs working for hedge funds (or whatever) while the people who do volunteer for the military (particularly as enlisted people rather than officers) are nearly all from less than well-off families. What Trudeau is saying is that if these well-off people think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are so great they should insist that the American military should be representative of all social classes.
In this series of Doonesbury strips, Trudeau is claiming that some students from well-off families are making fun of B. D. because he volunteered for three wars (Vietnam, the first Gulf war, and the war in Iraq). They were saying that he is crazy for volunteering when he comes from a well-off background himself. They were saying that only people from less than well-off need the money enough to volunteer and any one from a well-off background has no need to volunteer and risk death. Regardless of whether Trudeau is correct in these claims, he is not addressing people who disagree with the war in this series of strips at all.
Been following Doonesbury from way, way back, and, pondering, I dont recall that we are given that much about the characters family background. Mike is from a farm couple in Iowa(?). Mark is from “ruling class” derivation, his dad is a corporate porker, trophy wife, etc. Zonker is from Volvo liberal roots. B.D. seems almost rootless, but I imagine that his placement in the story line as a football scholarship student at least implies some working class derivation.
O.K., we don’t know that much about B. D.'s family background, but we know that he didn’t volunteer for the Vietnam War until he was out of college. He didn’t volunteer for the First Gulf War until he was long out of college and working as a motorcycle policeman. He didn’t volunteer for the war in Iraq until he was working as a college football coach. In each case, he didn’t volunteer because he needed the money. He wasn’t an 18-year-old from a relatively poor background who either need the money to survie or needed the money to attend college. If you read all the strips in this series, it’s clear that that’s why the students are making fun of him. These students say that the war is great, but no one who doesn’t need the money should be volunteering for the military. Again, my point was that this series of strips is not addressed to people who are against the war. It’s addressed to people who are for the war but who would never volunteer for the military, who don’t know anyone who does, and who think that someone from their well-off background would be crazy if they did.
Parallel in Platoon, when Charlie Sheen’s character shamefacedly announces he volunteered because he didn’t think it was fair that he should be exempt for his privilege. The black guy thought he was nuts, as I recall.
Three wars for BD? Trudeau, with the term “three wars,” is as short-sighted as the people he castigates. IRL, my dauther’s bio-dad will soon retire with his 20 years served during a truly "sucks to be you’ period for the American soldier - Panama, Gulf I, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Gulf II, besides dreary garrison duty in Korea & Germany.
The grain of luck of his career was is that it ended before the next step of Iraq/Afghanistan (two simultaneous wars on either side of Iran): when you make a sandwich, you eventually bite into the meat. But still, whatever this man has to go through to build a civillian life after all this…our respect or lack thereof is of marginall impact on such an enormous personal burden. Who is the true stranger to planet earth - he, who must return from what he’s endured and pull a life together, or us who live in such an insulated portion of it?* And do we thank him for our stupid insularity, or were we as safe as we would have been regardless of whether he had protected us from… Manuel Noriega?
It was inconceivable that an American of military age in 1941 with political ambitions could shirk duty. Did Joe Kennedy Sr. really want to get at the enemy so much that he put one son in a flying bomb and another in a wooden boat just out of bellicosity? But by Vietnam, farting around in a state Air guard was sufficient. Now with all these quasi-wars, there will be no shame for the future politician who only defended his country by buying a bigger SUV with commensurate sales tax which ultimately supported our troops godblessem.
*True story: he came back to Fort Campbell for two weeks last spring before he had to return to Iraq. He wanted to take his wife and their son & my daughter to the new Atlanta aquarium, which is chocked-solid with school tours, girl scout troops and other advance-booked visitors. So they were turned away, which didn’t bother a guy who can make a banquet out of a cold bottle of Coke, but which bugs the shit out of me.
In the early strips, BD’s father worked for an aerospace manufacturing company (making fighter planes); he was a from-the-start Ronald Reagan follower.
The scenario in this particular storyline is that the students in Scot Sloan’s ethics class feel it’s “stupid” to volunteer if you’re “someone with a future”, … **NOT ** because it’s a wrongful war, or because it’s a doomed cause, or because of conscientious objection. What raises Scot’s and BD’s ire is not so much that they say they’d rather help win the war by managing hedge funds, but that they consider the service to be the province of dead-enders and the can’t understand how BD, who was more or less secure in civilian life, would make such a decision, and they call it stupid to his face.