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Brotherhood of the Lottery

By Josh Lucas

There is one day in my life that I will never forget: the day I returned—alive and well—from Vietnam. When I think about it, there is a rush of feeling and remembrance of the sights, smells and sounds of that wondrous day.

Getting off that plane in Washington State with everything so green and the air so fresh, about a hundred and fifty young men returned from Vietnam. Some kissed the ground; others were yelling crazy things; but everyone was so high you would have thought they had just won the lottery—which, of course, they had.

These boys were the very happy, very lucky members of the Brotherhood of the Lottery.

Despite the sadness, it always comforts me when I meet or hear about a fellow brother whose life has turned south on him, for I know that for at least one day in his life, anything was possible. There are many in this world who will never have a day like that, and there are many who lost in that lottery.

When you go into the military, you sign a contract. Once you take that step, you are theirs, but even then, when it comes to assignments, the military has a certain set of rules it is supposed to follow. When I was in the army, they sent you to Vietnam for twelve months, and if you were a Marine, it was thirteen months. You knew what you had to do and you tried to make the best of it.

When President Bush went on television and said, "Bring it on," I knew exactly what he meant. He had rammed tax cuts through the Republican-controlled Congress to the benefit of the wealthiest Americans, and now not only would the rest of America have to carry a greater burden paying for his stupid war in Iraq, but their sons and daughters would have to fight it for him. I did not think I could get angrier, but I was wrong.

I saw a story about a reservist infantryman named Justin from Portland, Oregon. He was a good kid who joined the reserves to make some money to go to school.

Time went very slowly for Justin in Iraq. There were times he was scared, but there was also boredom. His life had taken on a surreal quality, as happens to all soldiers, but he did his duty.

He knew the date he was supposed to go home. Every day, he crossed out a day on his short-timer's calendar. Toward the end, his buddies tried to keep him as safe as possible.

When it came time for Justin to go home, Uncle Sam said, "Sorry, Justin, your stay here is extended." In less than a month, Justin became a losing member in the Brotherhood of the Lottery. In spite of doing everything he was supposed to do, he was denied a day he would have remembered for the rest of his life. There are certain rules when you are a short-timer. They had changed the rules in midstream.

They do not have enough soldiers. If this war in Iraq is such an important war, where are the wealthiest Americans' kids, like Bush's daughters? The tax cuts made sure they go to good schools like Yale or the University of Texas.

Those schools force you to take a course called Critical Thinking. They knew that if Saddam Hussein could not even control the northern part of his own country, he couldn't be a threat to us. They knew that the inspectors were in Iraq and were doing their job when the president ordered the invasion, and that they had not found any WMDs.

They knew that Bin Laden was a religious fanatic and that Saddam was a secular tyrant who was more scared of him than he was of us, and there is no way they would work together. In other words, their only source of news was not the "liberal media," whose only source seems to be the Bush White House.

I would like to blame the president and his crew, but they really believe in what they are doing. They really believed our soldiers would be met with flowers. They actually said it. They should be drug-tested.

This Iraq policy was designed by Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, etc. Not one was a member of the Brotherhood of the Lottery. Bush, of course, dishonored himself by using political pull to get out of the draft and into the Air Guard, forcing someone else to become a member of the Brotherhood.

They are supported in this insanity by their soulmates Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, and the ever-popular Michael Savage. None of these ideologues are members of the Brotherhood either. The macho act these blowhards put up is getting a little old, especially when all they do is talk the talk and let the boys and girls of the second America walk the walk.

The problem is the media. I am not talking about the New York Post or Fox News; they make no pretense of journalistic integrity. We like to bash lawyers, but the real choice is lawyers or guns. We love to bash reporters, but the real choice is tyranny or journalistic integrity. When Tim Russert interviewed the president, he could have asked him about Ben Barnes getting him into the National Guard ahead of a hundred and fifty others. Russert knew the truth.

The New York Times has apologized for not investigating the WMD reports coming out of the administration. Has ABC, NBC, or CBS done the same? The number of people who believe there is a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda is amazing. Reports show that they were blood enemies and could never work together.

In this world of mass media, the number of lies and distortions of the truth is staggering. It is time for the media to get back to doing its job, which is to try to search for the truth. No one can be completely objective, but it is in the trying that journalism has proven its great value in a free society.

If the media had been doing its job, Bush would have lost the election, we would not have invaded Iraq, and Justin would not be a losing member of the Brotherhood of the Lottery; he would be going to school in Portland, Oregon.