This is funny:
(If you want to "shock and awe" one of these folks, just mention that your son is in the Army. The look of horror is instantaneous, though it vanishes quickly.)
I have a younger cousin who fought in Iraq, a marine who joined the service after 9/11 because (in part) of 9/11. I had the interesting experience of mentioning this fact to a couple of young college students passing through my small hometown on their way home from an anti-war demonstration. Their reaction was almost entirely the same as that mentioned by Turner! I don't think the horror came from a distaste for the idea that anyone would join our military; rather, the horror seemed to be a reflection of their confusion over how to continue the conversation we'd been having. Their reaction seemed to signal the fact that they couldn't continue our conversation for fear of offending me—How, exactly, can one politely communicate the fact that our soldiers are committing evil when the receiver of such information has a close family member who is now a soldier fighting in the disputed war?--at least that's the impression I had of their horror.
What they didn't realize, because I didn't tell them: I opposed the war; I had rational reasons for opposing the war; and I had no problem opposing the war while respecting my cousin's right to make the decision to support our military by his service.
I imagine that a pro-war conservative would have reacted in horror if I had said my cousin had refused to fight in what he believed to be an unjust war, choosing punishment from the military instead. Rather than clamping up in confusion, chances are good that the conservative would have called him a "coward" or a "traitor." Perhaps the conservative would have had a similar confusion, would have clamped up, if he and I were close friends or to preserve the semblance of propriety.
I have recently learned that my cousin is finally coming home from Iraq. He was part of a military convoy that was attacked a week or so ago by RPG, still has shrapnel in his legs that can't be surgically removed (it is too near nerves), has lost the hearing in one ear and hears a constant ringing in the other. He has told his mother that he's seen things in the war he never thought he'd see (even knowing he'd be fighting as a marine), which he still sees in nightmares. He's almost twenty-one. Despite his sacrifices and the sacrifices of other soldiers and their families (not to mention the "sacrifices" of non-combatants), the war isn't finished.
BTW, I'm not a member of that dreaded "academic elite," nor a wannabe. I think another thing about this essay is funny: Turner uses the supposed disinclination for rational debate, in the leftest of leftist liberals, to support his thesis but seems to have ignored altogether the attempts by some conservatives to quash debate. I remember some attempts to make demonstration against the war a crime of treason--certainly, the charge was often made. I'm not saying that liberals are always rational; but I'd be damned for lying if I said that all conservatives act from a primarily rational motive. The mark of conservative fear might not be a "slinking off," but the opposite: a frontal attack--verbal, political or actual--on those who do not share their views. (This talk of changing the Constitution to make marriage a union between one man and one woman is a good example. For such strict Constitutionalists to seek such a change is hilarious beyond my ability to communicate.)
Curtis.
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