A Portion of Pathos: My Personal Plea

I try to stick to the purpose of this blog for the most part, whether that means bending ideas to fit the blog or bending the blog to fit the ideas.  But, this entry's message cannot be contorted into one about dating, nor should it be.  This entry is not about dating or romance or sex.  But, it is about love.  Above all things, it is about love.

I love my little brother.  Like my father, he grew up to be tall and handsome.  His sharp intelligence comes off as unassuming.  His smile comes easily.  He has a sweet disposition.  He is bad at telling jokes but a master at slapstick.  He is one of those people who seems to be good at everything.  And, when he is not the best, you always have the feeling that it might be because he wants to let others win once in a while.  He values where he came from, but has never been afraid to strike out in his own direction.  Sometimes, in fact, it seems like he has never been afraid of anything.  He loves his wife intensely and lives, first and foremost, to protect her vulnerabilities.  He believes in the existence something larger than himself that demands of him equal parts humility and service.  He is noble and strong.  And, he is brave.  He is also being deployed by the U.S. Navy.

It is easy as we debate the institution no-fly zones over Libya, haggle over the merits of attacks by air and by sea, gasp as Gaddafi rails against our impertinence with equal vigor, and grind the issue down to who said what to whom and who that makes a liar, to forget that decisions mean orders and orders mean deployments and deployments mean goodbyes -- goodbyes without the guarantee of hellos again.  The sacrifice of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and siblings has been a part of every war since the beginning of time.  It underlies every decision, every order.  It is present in every report from the war zone.  Yet, we so easily forget (or maybe we ignore) what it means, on this very basic human level, to go to war.  The battles we fight are across oceans, against unfamiliar ideologies, in cities we've never seen.  Most of us do not have a loved one in the military or even know someone who does.  So, yes, I can see how it is easy to forget...how it is possible to ignore.

In reality, today only 1% of the United States shoulders the burden of fighting on behalf of our country in times of war.  Yet, we make more noise over the 1% who pay a higher price in taxes than we do over this 1% who pay a heavier price with their lives, their health, or, at the very least, their hearts.  And unlike the top
1% paying all those taxes, this 1% is neither the richest, nor the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the ablest.  They do not have more life to give than any of the rest of us.  And, yet, they give what they have -- willingly, quietly, and without complaint.  People like my brother risk their own lives.  People like my sister-in-law and my family risk the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers.  And, all the while, the rest of us, angrily angling for or against this or that policy decision, this or that broken election promise, this or that humanitarian objective, really risk only being wrong. 

It is easy to jump on a bandwagon or be swept away by righteous indignation arguing for a "justice" for which we will never have to personally chip in.  In the business world, the people running a company are inherently distrusted if they will not throw some "skin in the game" (buy stock in their own company).  No one wants to invest in an enterprise in which the guys in charge are afraid to risk their own security.  Yet, we feel entitled to pontificate about committing our troops to a war in which we stand to suffer no personal loss.  If we enter the war, maybe it will be over in days, maybe it will reinforce the power and influence of the U.S., maybe it will win Obama another election -- and maybe it won't.  If we happened to preach the wrong side, the only thing that might be injured is our pride.  At times, we can fall so in love with the personal puffery surrounding political rhetoric that we become blind to the fact that, while saving the citizens of an African nation means we get to be the international hero, it means indescribable suffering to the person who will lose a loved one in the fight.  And that person may be the one sitting there enduring our tirades, biting his or her tongue, adrift in a sea of fear and pain that we could not begin to comprehend.

And, yes, I know:  joining the Navy was my brother's choice.  Months before my brother left for the Naval Academy, al Qaeda ran hijacked planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  And, in the horror and grief that ensued, my mother asked him if he was reconsidering his choice to go fly planes for the Navy.  He told her very simply: "Yes.  Now I want to go even more."  In the wake of death and terror, people like my brother chose to join the league of protectors rather than protected.  His was a choice that each of us counted on someone else making.  Each one of us who did not choose that life assumed that someone else would.  We took for granted that he and those like him would choose to train and fight and sacrifice so that we could choose otherwise.   This does not now entitle us to disregard that sacrifice in order to defend our self-centered expostulations on impending war.  The deaths of military troops are just as agonizing as the deaths of civilians.  On the other side of each one is a weeping parent, spouse, or child who did not choose that loss, who bears their grief quietly as the cost of love.  My brother did not become expendable because he chose to protect us.  He became invaluable.

There is no thanks that can be given in equal exchange for the service and sacrifice of military members and their families.  I am not asking that more people join the military, nor am I asking that we never enter another war.  All I am asking is that, in our heated debates over who to help and who to bomb, who to support and who to destroy, we remember the obligation inherent to being a citizen of the United States to protect those that protect us.  Today, as we argue and make decisions about who to defend and who to overthrow, I am pleading with each of you to consider the people who will be footing the bill for our righteous indignation and global heroics with their families and their lives.  Rather than lamenting the loss of young glorious men like my brother in the weeks and months that follow, weigh the cost of their loss today.  Among policy and reputation and transparency and politics, let them matter.  Let them matter today as much, if not more, than what the world will think of us tomorrow.