July
18, 2003, 12:15 p.m.
Disgrace Abounding
The
First Amendment and the military.
ead
us not into temptation. I commend this commandment to Peter Jennings
of ABC, who did exactly that devil-work with only lightly concealed gusto
in midweek on his nightly news.
Here are two or three
soldiers, outdoors, their gear still on. The sun is scorching hot. In
fact, our soldiers have been hot for four months. And sand swept, early
on. They were fighting a very hot war for six weeks, and maybe one of
them, maybe all three, saw other soldiers alongside being killed. And
for what seem now the interminable weeks since April 9, when Saddam's
statue was toppled and Baghdad surrendered, they haven't known where the
next stray bullet or hand grenade will come from, or whether one of them
will be its victim. And it isn't only the hidden assailant who has eyes
on them, it's all those Iraqis who scurry about taunting them as infidels
and oppressors, and sometimes throwing rocks. Thank God, they all thought
until a few days ago, their division would be called back to America in
a week or two! — but no. An order came in canceling their departure,
prolonging their tour of duty for who knows how long.
Along comes Peter Jennings's reporter, with the camera and the microphone.
"Well, soldier, what do you think about staying on in Iraq?"
It is a tribute to residual self-control (maybe mother would be watching?)
that the soldier asked that question didn't reply using spiky barracks-talk.
Peter wanted to know, what did the soldier think about staying on for
a while in Iraq?
What this soldier said was that he wanted to go home, that he could no
longer trust the word of the military, that he wasn't sure the whole operation
wasn't a bad idea, that he had no good feelings left for the Iraqis, given
how badly they were reacting to the G.I.s.
What would you expect him to say?
Well, in fact, one would have hoped for something different, but that
may be a counsel of perfection. Wallace Beery or Douglas Fairbanks or
Errol Flynn might have said to the reporter, "Arsehole! You think
it's fun here? Why are you asking dumb questions? If you mean,
will we stay on as long as we're needed, why yes, and God bless the Queen!"
It takes self-conscious acknowledgment of the irony, when writing in an
air-conditioned study, to reproach soldiers in the field. As a matter
of punctilio, they were in fact rebuked, by the head of Central Command
the following day. General Abizaid stated that under Army code, no criticism
is permitted, nor even disparagement, of command decisions. The First
Amendment does not apply in the military. A court martial could be summoned,
but won't be — to do so would only attract Peter's notice, and bring
more attention to the episode. The offending soldiers will be reprimanded,
which will give them something more to gripe about.
Perhaps they will be taken to one side and spoken to, by their company
commander, or, who knows, maybe even the general. He might begin by saying
to them: Have you got any idea of something called pride? Pride is what
kept the Mayflower people from giving up and sailing back to England.
It's what gave the early Americans the steel to face their own Iraqs —
Indians and freezing weather and hunger and pain and loneliness. There
was something there that made them stick it out. And they hoped, those
who wrote home and sang songs and wrote poetry, that in doing so they
would endow a tradition, served by American soldiers for three centuries,
in jungles and swamps and deserts (yes, deserts), where many of them lived
and died not for four months but sometimes for years.
"And they," the company commander might conclude, "were
draftees. We are volunteers. We said we'd do the work, go where
we were told to go, fight who we were told to fight, accept the orders
we got, and do this without griping to Peter Jennings.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
ead
us not into temptation. I commend this commandment to Peter Jennings
of ABC, who did exactly that devil-work with only lightly concealed gusto
in midweek on his nightly news. 
