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Someone Else's Kids

By Douglas Nelson

This piece is a response to an article in a local paper congratulating suburban Virginia for sending their kids to college and not to Iraq.

I am troubled today that we affluent suburbanites are congratulating ourselves on sending our children to college instead of to Iraq. Have we written off the kids in Iraq as "someone else's kids"? Too bad they come home with their faces blown off. Our kids are safe at Georgetown and the University of Virginia.

Whether through our fear, our apathy or our stupidity, we have placed other people's children in a war we have no idea how to fight. Occupying Iraq is in no way "defending America," unless one believes that the oil under Iraq is, in fact, ours because we burn up more of it than we can produce ourselves. I resent the lie these kids are told, because I was told the same lie.

I went to Vietnam, not because I was patriotic, but because I dropped out of college. It took nights of discussion with my peers and lots of reading before I realized that I was not defending my country at all. History has exonerated the Sixties protesters and their professors. For all their boisterous self-righteousness, they were right.

Those who are so eager today to send our kids to war considered themselves too good to go to war as young men. In some cases, their elders advised them of ways to get out of combat. Could it be that they were all smart enough to see that the war in Vietnam was not worth their lives? How strange it is that they denigrate John Kerry for reaching the same conclusion after he went to war and served with distinction.

I believe that, deep down, we don't really want this war in Iraq. Will we see Pioneer contributors and Halliburton execs throw a gala bash and invite the military recruiters to talk to their children? Do military recruiters visit posh private schools? I don't think so.

If going to Iraq is not right for their children, then it is not right for ours. In our efforts to push the responsibility for this war off on someone else, we have forgotten that those we have sent to Iraq are our American kids, every one of them.

We have a de facto draft, in which people who have little hope of education or jobs turn to military service. Many young people were eager to serve in the military after 9/11 because they saw a clear need to defend their country against the very people who attacked us. I think that this false connection of "terrorism" to Iraq betrays their trust in us, and makes a mockery of their willingness to serve.

The active-duty troops, Reserve and Guard in Iraq are exhausted. We cannot continue to send these people back for years at a time. We must either decide that we made a mistake, and pull them all out, or bring in many more fresh, well-trained troops. I am afraid that both Bush and Kerry would institute the draft.

The only fair draft would be to call up everyone: men and women, rich and poor, with no deferments for college and no lottery. May I make a prediction? Middle-class people of affluence will take to the streets rather than see their children sent to Iraq. Real opposition to the Vietnam war began with parents of children facing the draft. It was fine, was it not, when "other people's kids" had to go?

This is not World War II. There is no threat to America that cannot be met with diplomatic, intelligence and military professionals, from every member country of the United Nations, doing their jobs with minimal interference from administration ideologues.

It is time to treat the Iraqis as adults. If their infrastructure is broken it is because they broke it. They will not adopt our form of government because we kill thousands of them, sow their land with radioactive munitions and torture detainees. Our war in Iraq is a tragic mistake. I want these kids out of there and home before we have 57,000 more of our kids' names on a wall. I want the best of VA education and health care for those who have served, not cuts in the Department of Veterans Affairs budget.

Do we love them enough to admit we made a mistake and bring them home?