The cost to families

Rod: I'm sorry to say this to you, but this post is utterly unmoored from rhyme or reason.
Have to say that I've heard some pretty heartless stuff about the price being paid by these families, along the lines of "They knew this was a possibility when they signed up" and "You call this a war? Three thousand dead is nothing!" This strikes me as mostly a way of dismissing their hardship and suffering, not trying to put it in context. I don't think you were referring to me, but I have said both of these things. I personally have always, though I think I would apply for most hawks in the general case too, made them in a rebuttal context when stories about war's hardships were, implicitly or explicitly, turned into reasons to oppose the war. Or when the Iraq war was being compared to other American wars or used to make grand statements about American power. And in any serious historical context, 3,000 dead soldiers IS nothing. It only feels like nothing because of structures and moods in today's touchy-feely society, aided by and fueling an unrelated belief that the Iraq war is either unjust or unworthy (though it that case, whether it was 300 or 30,000 would make no difference). I could turn the tables on this point ... to dwell on these stories strikes me as mostly a way of delegitimizing the war, not of drawing attention to human hardship and suffering, except as a means to that end. As in statements like "anyone who still supports the US mission in Iraq has the moral obligation to read that Times story." No, Rod, I don't. I already know soldiers suffer a bunch of shit on a hundred fronts. That's why we salute and honor them. The details could only "persuade" someone who was already persuaded. For example, when did the world not know that homefront women miss their men? The WW2 generation turned it into a whole movie genre, usually starring Ginger Rogers, Greer Garson and Claudette Colbert, and playing on TCM and AMC every Memorial and Veterans Day. But nobody (and I mean *nobody*) argued that this was a reason to think WW2 was either unjust or not worth fighting. Only in today's emotivist society would any decent woman think "my man is off fighting a war" gives her an excuse to cat around rather than a double incentive (versus say, his being away on business) NOT to do so. I'm sure some did indeed decide contrarily in the 40s as well. But no organ of public opinion then would have considered this anything but human sin, or dared to claim it said Word One about the war. I mean, one of the reasons Rod and I are so intellectually simpatico is our resistance to the therapeutic society, to the death of honor and manhood, to the end of stoic nobility. That, to name a recent example, we both know that no honorable man would wrestle a woman (or poach on a soldier's family, if it needs saying). But where is *that* Rod when it comes to NYT efforts to tug at the heartstrings in its effort to run intereference for jihad?

Victor, people get hurt in war. I get that. I get that sacrifices have to be made. But unless you believe that a war of choice justifies *every* possible sacrifice (as a war of national survival would), then there comes a point in time when the costs of continuing the war outweigh the benefits. The costs to military and reservist families of fighting this war are very real (I've talked to a couple of officers, one of them a chaplain, who have told me that the problem of shattered marriages is huge; one officer, who is fairly high-ranking, told me last year that the number of colonels retiring from active service is really worrying, given that they're tomorrow's generals, but that they were doing so to save their marriages and families). If we still believe the Iraq War is worth asking these men and their families to bear this burden, fine. But to deny as some on the right do the significance of the burden, particularly in light of the unlikelihood of a meaningful victory in the Iraq struggle, is wrong.
I happen to think that Charlie Rangel has a point: if we're going to fight this war, its costs should be socialized, especially in the form of a military draft. If every family in America had to think about their sons and husbands going off to keep the Sunnis and the Shia from killing each other, we'd be a lot more thoughtful about this war. But as long as the costs are borne by families that the vast majority of Americans don't even know, it's "out of sight, out of mind."

One other thing: I don't mean to come across as implying that you don't know that people get hurt in wartime. But you are (publicly at least) seeming to be persuaded by arguments and points that only should be persuasive to someone who doesn't know this or who thinks that it per se unjust that it is the case (i.e., people who have a lot of growing up to do). And that's not you.

Guys, all I'm trying to say is that there is a serious and rising cost to individuals and families from our ongoing involvement in Iraq. It is not an insignificant cost (that 3,000 number is nothing, unless one of the 3,000 happens to be your husband or son or brother). It is not a cost that connects to most people in this country, except for what they read in the newspaper or see on TV. If the war were morally and strategically right, it would make these sacrifices worthwhile. Nobody says that the much greater sacrifices of World War II, for example, weren't worth it. But I just don't see why a cost-benefit analysis that involves taking into account the suffering of these military families is not worth considering.
Back when the war first started, I knew that my brother in law might have to go fight in it, and as much as I hated that thought, I believed it was a sacrifice that the cause required. Four years on, given the situation there, I conclude that any sacrifices made by US soldiers and their families on the homefront will be in vain (by which I mean will make no lasting difference in Iraq). Which makes the fact that Bush is asking even more from these families even more appalling. I'm not arguing that what these families are going through is reason to get out of Iraq, were all other things going well there, or if I judged that we had a chance to win ("win"). What I am saying, though, is that war is not its own justification, and for this war to continue to be seen as just, it must be demonstrated that we, the aggressor, still have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and that it is worth the continued sacrifice. Telling these families, in effect, to suck it up will not do.

Victor, to be clear, I'm not saying "what if it was your own brother" with the intent of delegitimizing your argument, in an "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand" way. This is a common way of arguing -- e.g., the people who say pro-life arguments made by males aren't valid because the males cannot bear children -- and I'm not engaging in it here. What I am saying, though, is that for people who have loved ones in harm's way in Iraq -- as I soon will -- the arguments about the war are no longer abstract, but painfully concrete. That doesn't make us right, but it does give us more of a stake in the outcome of the argument. If I'm understanding you correctly, you believe that there is no price too high to pay for American victory in Iraq. I don't agree. I believe we have lost, not for lack of valor among our troops, but because the objectives we were/are pursuing -- a stable pluralistic Iraq -- is unachievable. Presumably you don't agree with me, but for the sake of argument, if you believed that we could not put Iraq back together again, what do you believe we should then do militarily? I agree that this defeat will have enormous repercussions. But I also believe that we cannot achieve victory based on will alone.

My husband is jumping through all sorts of military hoops hoping to go back into the army- guard this time- with the clear understanding that he will, sooner or later, be in the middle east and be, literally, a flying target. He could become one of the next 4,000 casualties. He could leave me a widow raising a number of young children. We both accept these possibilities because we believe that pacifying islamists is a direct route to a non-Christian future and nation for our grandchildren. We believe that fighting a war in hopes of bringing freedom to a whole nation of people is worthy. Its one thing to tell our sons about honor and duty and love of country and quite another to show them. Whatever you may think of the war or the hardships that military families endure in its wake, please don't hold us up as helpless victims worthy of universal pity. We DID choose this and publishing stories about some miserable trollop as a representation of what soldiers families are and do is an insult to the majority of us who are too busy raising our kids and honoring our spouses to even think of screwing around.