Our (stupid) boys and our (stupid) wars
The other day, I came across this article: "Don't trust soldiers under 30" by Ted Rall, Jan. 4, 2006.
My first thought was, yeah right, there's no one over the age of 30 dumb enough to sign up for the military–certainly not enough of them to fill the dwindling ranks they've got now even with restrictions lifted right and left. The military depends on inexperience, ignorance of politics and current affairs, lack of funds and future and simple patriotic bombast to recruit stupid boys hopped up on testosterone, delusions of invincibility and power and, of course, that damnable male ego who still think war is noble, righteous, sexy and just plain cool: Which, I soon realized, actually describes much of the decidedly less than young male population as well.
Though they may lose some of their physical prowess, make some money and project a little less overt, effervescent homicidal rage than their adolescent incarnations (there's a reason just about every despotic, genocidal leader worth the moniker has used teenage boys to carry out the most repugnant of his designs), men never really grow up.
They can't make up their minds, they wantonly wreck things and some of them even get "remember 9/11" tattoos and give in to overactive death drives pulling them to war zones for civilian contract work.
So perhaps this idea isn't so harebrained–all we need to do is make military service the cool new midlife crisis catharsis experience in American culture.
If insecure, trigger-happy old men are the ones making the decisions and sending people to war, instead of trying futilely to change that dynamic and the human nature that spawns it, at least we could have them send their fellow insecure, trigger-happy old men to do the warring instead of casting younger generations into their farce.
This would also be the perfect solution to the looming pension crisis and the coming influx of retiring baby boomers–draft the damn freeloaders into service. If you've got a "support the troops" ribbon or a vestigial Bush/Cheney '04 sticker on your SUV/minivan/penis car, you're first. What with all the automated weapons, covert ops and air power doing everything important, it would be feasible. Maybe they could even get the AARP behind it. Add the NRA, it would be unstoppable.
I can see the ads now: "Why let the youngsters have all the fun of signing up to kill people on the whims of a corrupt, inconsistent and incompetent government? Why wile away your retirement or–ha!–volunteer your time to help people still struggling to get by when you could fight for American values and American freedom? Visit your local armed forces recruiter today, and stop sitting around enjoying things while you could be out destroying things!"
That might come off as crass if we didn't have a president taking part of one day out of his holiday vacation to visit soldiers who have had limbs blown off in Iraq, only to joke about his own bicycling boo-boos as if they were comparable.
This past semester, I took a class on the Vietnam War with one of those rare professors whose final lecture you walk out of thinking, "Damn, so that's why I'm amassing tens of thousands of dollars in debt to listen to these people talk."
It was about how the legacy of the Vietnam Wars, basically all wars, comes down not to body counts and statistics, but to intensely personal cycles between generations, between fathers and sons, of war and trauma and abuse and sorrow and attempted atonement, leading only to more of the same.
No one returns. Every generation has to have its war. He basically apologized for the mess his generation has left for ours. As if we would have done things differently.
My first thought was, yeah right, there's no one over the age of 30 dumb enough to sign up for the military–certainly not enough of them to fill the dwindling ranks they've got now even with restrictions lifted right and left. The military depends on inexperience, ignorance of politics and current affairs, lack of funds and future and simple patriotic bombast to recruit stupid boys hopped up on testosterone, delusions of invincibility and power and, of course, that damnable male ego who still think war is noble, righteous, sexy and just plain cool: Which, I soon realized, actually describes much of the decidedly less than young male population as well.
Though they may lose some of their physical prowess, make some money and project a little less overt, effervescent homicidal rage than their adolescent incarnations (there's a reason just about every despotic, genocidal leader worth the moniker has used teenage boys to carry out the most repugnant of his designs), men never really grow up.
They can't make up their minds, they wantonly wreck things and some of them even get "remember 9/11" tattoos and give in to overactive death drives pulling them to war zones for civilian contract work.
So perhaps this idea isn't so harebrained–all we need to do is make military service the cool new midlife crisis catharsis experience in American culture.
If insecure, trigger-happy old men are the ones making the decisions and sending people to war, instead of trying futilely to change that dynamic and the human nature that spawns it, at least we could have them send their fellow insecure, trigger-happy old men to do the warring instead of casting younger generations into their farce.
This would also be the perfect solution to the looming pension crisis and the coming influx of retiring baby boomers–draft the damn freeloaders into service. If you've got a "support the troops" ribbon or a vestigial Bush/Cheney '04 sticker on your SUV/minivan/penis car, you're first. What with all the automated weapons, covert ops and air power doing everything important, it would be feasible. Maybe they could even get the AARP behind it. Add the NRA, it would be unstoppable.
I can see the ads now: "Why let the youngsters have all the fun of signing up to kill people on the whims of a corrupt, inconsistent and incompetent government? Why wile away your retirement or–ha!–volunteer your time to help people still struggling to get by when you could fight for American values and American freedom? Visit your local armed forces recruiter today, and stop sitting around enjoying things while you could be out destroying things!"
That might come off as crass if we didn't have a president taking part of one day out of his holiday vacation to visit soldiers who have had limbs blown off in Iraq, only to joke about his own bicycling boo-boos as if they were comparable.
This past semester, I took a class on the Vietnam War with one of those rare professors whose final lecture you walk out of thinking, "Damn, so that's why I'm amassing tens of thousands of dollars in debt to listen to these people talk."
It was about how the legacy of the Vietnam Wars, basically all wars, comes down not to body counts and statistics, but to intensely personal cycles between generations, between fathers and sons, of war and trauma and abuse and sorrow and attempted atonement, leading only to more of the same.
No one returns. Every generation has to have its war. He basically apologized for the mess his generation has left for ours. As if we would have done things differently.
posted by Holly at 2:02 AM
<< Home