Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Remembering six years of lost hope

Today has been slightly off kilter. It’s the sixth anniversary of 9-11, but I’ve not heard one person mention it today. My students have been in and out of the newspaper office, but no mention of this most somber of days. Do you suppose they have decided to not think about it? After all, the media has been covering it, but for them to think about something this tragic would only remind them of the danger we face in this 21st century world of ours.

I wear a copper bracelet on my right wrist most days. This bracelet honors a young man, the son of friends from church and work, who has been in Iraq for more than a year. He’s with the 82nd Airborne Division. He has followed his father into the Army. His dad was a career officer, but retired before this latest military adventure began. The combination of this bracelet, and my own memories of the sixties, the USMC, and personal feelings about duty, honor and that seemingly out-of-date belief that one owes his country something more than the taxes one complains of every April has me deeply concerned about where we as a nation are heading.

Yesterday and today, General David H. Petraeus and the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, have testified before Congress. The picture they paint is of a struggle we can still win. I don’t believe that. I believe we are looking for the same escape clause we sought in Vietnam, an honorable pause that would allow us to withdraw while claiming victory. We didn’t get it. The country collapsed on us and we got to watch CBS, ABC and NBC film of helicopters lifting off from the American Embassy compound in Saigon, and finally from the rooftop of the embassy as North Vietnamese units stood just outside the city ready to take over.

The soldiers and marines and airmen who fought that war for Uncle Sam took a lot of guff from citizens and officers who wanted to blame a soft country for the failure, while refusing to learn that most basic of lessons. Some wars just shouldn’t be fought. If you don’t have a dog in the fight, leave it alone. So, thirty years later we’re watching an unfolding horror story. Insurgents, I guess that’s the new name for guerillas, blow us up every day and we blow a part villages and towns in retaliation. It seems such a waste of money, material, men and lives.

The question of a draft swirls around the periphery of any discussion about Iraq, but the military doesn’t want to think about it. They point, and rightfully so, to the strength, honor and ability of the modern volunteer military. They are right to do so, but it is my contention they miss the point. Iraq, while demonstrating the vast superiority in military firepower and maneuver of our modern army and Marine Corps, demonstrates the failure of our small volunteer army to fight a major war.

I seem to remember that during the 1970s, when the concept of the volunteer army was being debated in Congress, it was part of the plan that the reserves and the National Guard were there to handle the short-term need for manpower until the nation could reactivate the draft and bring in the numbers necessary for fighting a war. In the first Gulf War, we escaped and the concept wasn’t tested too severely. In fact, Iraq’s inability to fight a modern war of maneuver hid the fault lines that are so evident today. After six years, and continuing to fight two wars while our leaders slavishly try to justify a third, we have a broken National Guard, wounded reserve system, and a so tightly wound regular army and Marine Corps that in just a few months it will begin to unravel. We are at the bottom of the barrel and unless we are able to entice even more volunteers to join the fight, our military will be broken.

It took the military a generation to overcome the failure of Vietnam. This one will be decades in recovery, if our enemies, and there are so many of them, are willing to give us time to recover. Strategically we are facing a catastrophe unless we stop this incessant “Stay the Course” and “Withdraw Now” argument. No one offers strategy. We only hear tactics. And of course, the tactics are too little and too late. We face a future in which all our institutions have failed us. Congress is too cowardly to confront an executive that is out of control. The executive acts more like a manic depressive, up or down, it doesn’t matter which, it’s crashing beyond repair. Our business world chases the almighty dollar while bankrupting the country. Our educational institutions seem to graduate students unwilling to sacrifice for a common good.

That’s what this anniversary of 9-11 brings to mind for me. I remember that morning when a young co-worker stuck her head in our conference room to tell our staff that the World Trade Center had been struck by an airplane. We rushed to TVs in time to watch a second plane hit, and less than an hour later collapse two buildings. It seemed so simple then. Mobilize a country that was ready to mobilize. That chance happens rarely for a president; however, instead of preparing for war, we were urged to go shopping. Is it any wonder we sit today watching a general present his views on the war, and no one believes him.