Make the world safe for safety

Eons ago, when everyone lived at more or less the same level, conflict based on control of resources and territory was a more or less animal thing, augmented gradually with various hand tools that might give one side a temporary advantage until their opponents figured out something equal or superior with which to retaliate. But, no matter who won, the big enemies were still famine and disease.

As technology advanced, unevenly, it made all aspects of life easier in places that possessed it, so that those cultures expanded more readily, dominating less technologically advanced cultures regardless of the ethics and morals of a given invasion. Technologically dominant powers probably inhibited the advancement of cultures they dominated. The evolutionary compulsion to advance tribal interest evolved into national interest, and imperialism. It was still the same basic urge that had inspired some hominid in a snit to pick up a rock or a jawbone and bust an adversary's head.

All the way up to World War I, disease still killed more warriors than actual battle did. Then improving medicine and killing hardware shifted the balance in war so that combatants could finally claim the higher score.

Setting aside mass slaughter for a moment, early hominids and primitive humans faced risk constantly. Risk takers served as test pilots for the species, advancing the frontiers of capability or providing grim lessons in what not to do. Our respect for risk takers probably predates language. But so does our eye-rolling amusement at generations of Darwin Award finalists, from long before Charlie D walked the Earth.

We can't control or predict earthquakes. We can observe hurricanes and predict their approximate course a few days in advance. We can home in on outbreaks of disease and try to contain their spread or develop vaccines. With eyes in the sky, we can give a few minutes' warning of tornados. We can advise people how to drive safely, and to avoid lifestyle habits linked to disease. But we can't predict exactly when someone will snap and start shooting, or when a nation will lose its grip on global citizenship and start a war inside or outside its own borders. You can say roughly, observing trends and monitoring communications, that a nation presents a risk. On an interpersonal level, you can sometimes tell -- or at least guess -- that someone is volatile.

This unpredictability in human behavior, combined with the long heritage of risk, gives our species a paradoxical yearning for safety and an unwillingness to commit to being safe. Most of us like to be able to move around without constant vigilance. For most of my life, this country seemed like a place like that. Of course I wasn't black, or an unaccompanied woman, and I never ventured into a bad neighborhood. Stuff happened, but it didn't seem as common as it does today.

Personal violence and institutional violence are the micro and the macro of humanity's danger to humanity. Our disdain for the natural world may manage to take us out before we dissolve into global combat. Or we might dodge the bullets both metaphorical and actual, and get our shit together. But the biggest threat to our safety is our belief that safety is impossible. We can't be sure that enough people -- maybe even all people -- could ever be willing to live and let live. We are not yet "all in this together."

With the technology at our command, there is no good excuse for human suffering. We have fear and anger in the world because we accept it.

All that is required for good to prevail is for bad people to do nothing. Focus on a common good that stems from energy and willingness to work, decoupled from grasping material ambition. Hold your temper. Disconnect your jealousy. Evolution beyond the weaponization of technology will require a level of conscious thought. It may prove impossible. Utopianists in a hurry will try to slap together a rule book full of begged questions that they understand intuitively, but vulnerable to interpretation.

To begin the process at all will require a general consensus that we will quit hurting each other. That one step has tripped us up for thousands of years. Rather than reach the point at which appreciative existence becomes our mission, we endure the constant clash between dark and light, the good people and the bad people doing things in opposition. If that's what we're stuck with, there's really no point in going on.

The Flipside of The Greatest Generation

Never underestimate the value of a good bad example.

Well-deserved praise has been heaped on those who answered the call of duty to defeat militarily the Axis powers in World War II. If you ignore the fact that we couldn't have done it without our own ally, that sweetheart Joseph Stalin, it really was a clash between Good and Evil.

The Nazis in particular did future generations a favor by being so categorically and undeniably evil. Of course they didn't view it as evil. They considered it an admirable rigidity of principle, and the iron will to carry out a ruthless plan to impose a virtuous monoculture across the globe. The urge itself is evil, but it has its adherents even now.

Because World War II came along when humans had developed film, broadcast, and recording technology, and because the Nazis were so stuck on themselves that they kept meticulous records, we have a lot of detailed history about who did what when. We can rapidly draw parallels to current events and show without a doubt what can happen when the logic of a hateful ideology is drawn out to its grimmest conclusion.

Mass killing is a human tradition. Some instinct impels us to try to wipe out rival DNA, to compete for global domination, starting right in our own back yards. It doesn't happen everywhere, all the time, but it recurs enough throughout history to show that we have a chronic problem. Returning to the bloodbaths of the mid 20th Century, we find plenty of historical records related to every theater of war and land under occupation.  Other examples than the aggressive Nazi regime haven't had the great marketing that makes the Third Reich such a strong brand, but the idea of killing people who don't agree with you needs no introduction, wherever it arrives.

It is this very archive of evil that gives us the graphic rebuttal to plans put forward now in countries that once considered themselves bastions of freedom. The hypocrisy of the United States is unfortunately evident in the persistence of official and unofficial racial segregation after the Second World War, but at least some efforts were made to acknowledge the rights of more than just white guys as the 20th Century passed the half. Those very efforts solidified the core of evil that predated the Nazis by a couple of centuries in our great country, and that sympathized with the actual Nazis in their rise to power.

Recognizing an evil does not automatically cure it, but it is the vital first step. Parallels to the Nazis are too freely drawn, but the sensitivity to Nazi-like encroachments is an early warning system for the advancement of a truly free and inclusive society.

The monoculturists consider the desire for a free and inclusive society to be the evil. They despise the weakness of accommodation. They pride themselves on their admirable rigidity of principle and iron will. That's why we keep having this argument. They must be refuted on principle, not just bested on the field of combat. In fact, combat merely obscures the real issues in a cloud of smoke and a spray of blood. That's why hardasses would rather fight a war than lose an argument. War is exciting, and some day they might win. Until then, they'll take whatever beating they have to, and retire, grumbling, if it goes against them again.

The real Greatest Generation will be the one that confronts and vanquishes its own evil in quiet meditation, and never inflicts its misery on the rest of the world. While I would welcome that at any time, I'm not holding my breath. Every generation has to interpret the world they find, and choose a way through it.

Memorial Day

Just because a person died in uniform doesn't mean they died for freedom. That's the saddest part. The great wallow in conspicuous gratitude and automatic exaltation of the death truly does the armed forces a disservice. Many of those lives have been outright wasted.

Killing and dying for what you believe

Praise the heroes who risk their own death to inflict death upon the forces of evil. Praise the people of principle who die proudly rather than submit to the beliefs they know are wrong. Praise the bravest of the brave, who die while performing acts of courage in the many conflicts that humanity has to resolve. Dealing death and receiving it are indispensable parts of a virtuous life.

Sacrifice does not have to be instantly supreme. You can kill or die by gradual steps guided by high principle. You can dismantle civilization a brick at a time, taking time to throw those bricks at deserving targets as you go along. All the while, blows and insults will be raining back on you as part of the grand melee.

The blows need not be actual. Acts of government and commerce can advance various beliefs, forcing compliance or death on whole nations and continents. It takes time, but it's worth it. It all rests on the basic principle that one must willingly kill and die for what's right. One must sacrifice. Let one's own life become more uncomfortable for the sake of taking down our foes. Take pride in your strength and courage to withstand the destruction of a sinful institution, even if the process leaves you poorly fed, unsheltered, bankrupt, maimed or dead. Don't blame the process of killing and dying for beliefs. Blame the opposing beliefs that force you to this extremity. Blame evil. Resist evil. Fight evil.

Don't be overly critical of the very few who seem to live very well, while exhorting the masses to soldier on in hopes of that better day when the good guys finally come out on top. You can come up with many plausible explanations for why they enjoy that status. Maybe a god likes them. Maybe they're just that much smarter and work that much harder than the rest of us. Maybe they really are jerks, but their logic makes sense so we should do what they say.

Species of social insects make war. The defenders fight, knowing that each of them will die. Individual survival does not matter. Colony survival is more important. They don't have flags, let alone coffins. They do not exhibit individuality. They do the right thing, win or lose, because it's their only chance. But it's not a noble fight for freedom. They are not free going in or coming out.

The word freedom is claimed by every person and group to represent their perfect world. Show me a people anywhere on the planet that does not call itself "freedom loving." No one says, "we want to live as slaves and minions for a small minority of overlords who can use us mercilessly for the glory of something or other." Even if they actually do live that way, they dress it up in fine language like submission to the will of God, or a sacrifice for some greater good which might not seem so good to everyone.

Nature is a free-for-all. Cruise through any natural environment and you will find life forms on top of life forms inside of life forms next to life forms, doing their thing and evolving -- successfully or unsuccessfully -- to be able to keep doing that thing, or a thing descended from it. Humans have been the same way, hampered increasingly by our creativity and inventiveness.

At first, creativity and inventiveness conferred advantages in the fight for global domination. Fast transportation and communication, combined with improving weapon technology, allowed certain groups to control large amounts of territory. It's all relative. Humans didn't go right from dugout canoes to aircraft carriers.

Unfortunately for global domination, with increased mobility and faster communication comes a greater ability to get to know each other. Along with this has come a certain distaste for widespread armed conflict. As the many wars raging at any given time will attest, this distaste is hardly universal. But it's gotten a strong enough hold to give humans a chance to interact a bit more politely and develop a sense that the little planet on which we live is going to serve any group better if all groups view it as a shared resource.

Evolutionary survival often hangs by a slender thread. What snips at our thread right now is the belief in too many people that it's better to destroy the whole thing for the greater glory of some deity or principle than it is to share it with "those people." Noble sacrifice is better than a compromised life. Live free or die. And take as many others with you as you have to. Kill them all. God will sort them out. Crap like that.

A world of truly free people would probably have less institutional violence, because the principle of individual freedom would supersede the formation of institutions that could order groups of people to fight each other. Hard to say whether there would also be less small-scale violence. The principle of respecting another person's freedom would preclude killing them, but the unrestrained expression of an individual's freedom might lead to a transgression that resulted in deaths.

Free people have to remember that they have no right to anything beyond arm's length. Go further and you are infringing on someone else's freedom. Say that you have a right to whatever your strength and guile can seize and you have diluted the principle of freedom to substitute the same old battle of competing would-be tyrants. Is life a mellow wander beside each other or an endless war? Is freedom best expressed by pushing as far as you can before you are forcibly stopped, or by renouncing the need for such things?

The Greatest Generation ruined war

The so-called Greatest Generation ruined war for everyone who came afterward. By trying to get it over with, the combatants in World War II developed such super-weapons that no rational person could advocate for war once these doomsday bombs existed.

The eager fans of warfare nowadays who idealize the Second World War and want to see grand mobilizations of force like that should be allowed to have their own great war, but they can't. The time line that spanned the climax of conventional war and entered the Nuclear Age has already run. Those glorious fireballs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the last and greatest expression of unlimited warfare. They set a standard we cannot afford to maintain, let alone surpass. The days of the grand existential struggle ended. The days of limited war began. Over all hangs the specter of nuclear murder-suicide.

So what's left for the fantasizing adolescent who wants to be a hero with a gun? Your life will be expended in a Police Action, or a surgical strike, or a hobbled, endless march through irreparably damaged failed states. How deeply satisfying.

If the architects of the Second World War had known better, or if we'd been lucky enough to fail at unlocking the deadly potential of the atom, we could have had that bloody and devastating invasion of Japan. If, at the end of it all, we still only had propeller aircraft, oil-fired warships, large but conventional explosives and brave men willing to take these weapons into battle, we could simply take a few years off to mop up the blood, bury the dead, shore up the walls and raise a few more kids before getting back down to the serious clash of cultures that should end with one -- and only one -- victorious.

Without nuclear weapons we could have had World War III with the Soviets. We could have killed Vladimir Putin's parents, so we would have a different person to deal with now. But of course "now" would be totally different. Maybe our forces would have faced the same fate as Hitler's and Napoleon's, leading us to withdraw, if not capitulate. Or we might have teamed up with the Russians to overrun China in a sort of reverse-Mongol-horde scenario.

Alas, we came out of the war under the shadow cast by the upward billow of atomic incandescence. Weary veterans came home eager for peace and a future without massive conflicts and huge slaughter. Those guys didn't know how good they had it, did they? Imagine that: a unified world settling disputes by courteous and rational exchanges of ideas. Crazy.

It obviously didn't work, but you have to give them credit for floating the notion. The warriors of our greatest conflict thought they were settling something for good. They used every tool at their disposal to put that thing to bed. War: been there, done that, done with it.

We insult the memory of people who fought to defeat tyranny and end the need for the wars tyranny breeds when we either practice tyranny or pine nostalgically for a past or future in which we are finally free to bump each other off as we see fit. I offer that for whatever it is worth to a species tearing at itself as it fouls its planet.

The End of the World

Humans tend to equate the end of the era of human domination with the end of the world itself. That's so cute. The planet existed for billions of years without us and will probably continue to orbit and support life long after we have knocked ourselves off our own pedestal and broken it up so we can throw the pieces at each other.

After World War II, legend has it that there was widespread support for the idea of a world without war. The one just ended had killed enough people and damaged enough real estate to make many survivors believe we could no longer accept armed conflict as a way to settle intellectual disputes.

Of course we continued to have wars. We just did not let them get out of hand. They tended to be inconclusive and unsatisfying, no matter how savage and bloody they may have been in their own theaters, and how divisive they might have been on the home front.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War it was easy to believe in Armageddon as a conflict between two political philosophies in control of discrete and contiguous land masses. It would be the conventional war of the past, scrawled immensely with enormous weapons. Probably no one would survive.

As the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated, preparing for Armageddon is not very economical. You have to have a balance of trade that supports your militaristic expansionism. Merely being armed and dangerous is nowhere near as effective as being rich and ruthless.

In the late 1990s the threat of superpower conflict seemed to have been banished forever. Indeed, this may be true. In the 20th Century we had the incorrectly named War to End All War. In the 21st Century we have the Wars That Can Never End. There's the one between corporate capitalism and Islamic radicalism. There are internal struggles and international chafe areas all over the world.

Separatism is the new nationalism. Dissolution has replaced unification. It's more important to refuse to lose an argument than it is to solve a human problem. Anyone, anywhere, might suddenly find themselves standing next to a suicide bomber. It doesn't happen often in some places, but there's really no reason it couldn't. Because you can't do anything about it, you can't worry about it. If someone is so pissed off at the world that they're going to flip out and kill a bunch of people you can't guarantee to stop them without completely abandoning civil liberties and making everybody go around naked under surveillance cameras. Even then, someone at some level will be wearing pants and giving orders. Or maybe a shirt and no pants. Our leader could be an exhibitionist.

Watching news coverage of the Islamic State and other thinly veiled excuses to commit murder, you can see the logic and the economy of small-scale conflict spread over a widening area. Because it travels on ideas rather than an advancing front of conquered and assimilated territory, a battle of sorts can break out anywhere one or more interested parties can equip themselves with cheap and available materials to spread a little bloodshed. Once people thrust away the idea of living in peace the logical result is fighting.

The people who like to fight and the people who like to watch them accuse anyone who speaks against it of being chicken. Don't think we should fight? You must be a coward. Right. Because those are the only two choices: warrior or coward. It's typical lazy binary thinking, to which humans are subject everywhere.

This would seem to imply a sort of unity among the warriors against the cowards. But the warriors need enemies to fight, not just weaklings to exterminate. Among both the peaceniks and the fighters, factions argue. In the peace camp the arguments just get bitchy. The warriors declare each other enemies and have another war. The result is fragmentation of both sides into smaller pieces that don't get along. The armed and dangerous crowd, often manipulated by the rich and ruthless, battle wherever they can. The bitchy arguments of the peace promoters get very bitchy indeed. Unkind things are said. It's very painful. It becomes very hard to put together a guest list for a party.

The conflict that brings down civilization and returns humanity to scrounging for food in a harsh landscape will not be the spectacular exchange of nuclear missiles, although someone may manage to get a few nukes mixed in. It will be more and more little bombs, rockets, bullets, clubs, knives, kidnappings, beheadings, torture, maiming, IEDs, rocks, bottles, here, there and everywhere. It will be one failed state after another. It will be breakaway republics reabsorbed by their old imperial masters, festering with armed resistance to both independence and absorption. It will be fighting for the sake of fighting, just to prove we can take it.

Maybe we'll burn out the fighting urge before it takes everything down. It seems doubtful at this point, but you never know. What fuels it now is the sense in so many people's minds that they could be the winner that takes all. So put together a band of fighters and start your campaign. Imagine your own Thousand Year Reich, or whatever your culture likes to call that empire of power and control so dear to the grandiose. Or maybe you envision a rational anarchy in which liberated people live in perfect individualistic harmony without paying any taxes to a stupid, intrusive government. Or maybe theocracy is your bag. Your group of true believers will create the nation favored by God to rule the planet. Unfortunately, just a few miles away, a similar group has formed. Take up your weapons. The first glorious battle is upon us. It certainly won't be the last.

Any survivors of this global conflict probably will be no wiser. They'll just be hungrier, more weather-beaten and less well armed. Some of them may be the kind of cowards who talk about living in peace, but we've seen how little traction that has. It will just be a whining noise in the background.

Is this all there is?

On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the president announced the escalation of a bombing campaign against more enemies. The "Freedom Isn't Free" crowd would tell you this is the way of the world. Implicit in that statement as it is used today is that "freedom" is always bought at the cost of warfare. The "free" gain their little clearing in the hostile world by laying down a constant barrage to protect its perimeter. War without end, amen.

If there was a God, I would have more respect if He, She, It showed up with something other than wrath and a flaming sword to punish the ungodly and reward the faithful, since that would simply be an eternal perpetuation of the same crap that has spoiled human existence. Psychologically, if you want to punish the wicked, let them truly feel and understand their wickedness. Don't just rough them up to try to make them physically regret getting caught. But that, of course is much harder than the simple application of violence. It would take an all-powerful god to to apply it.

Save the world?

When I was young my father used to ask me, "What did you do today to make the world a better place?" Or it might have been, "What did you do for mankind today?" In any case, it was a call to serve a higher purpose than personal gratification or even personal salvation. He wanted me to think globally. He never specified which humans or whose specific world I was to improve by my presence.

Maybe I was supposed to figure out the narrowing parameters for myself. In that case he failed completely.

Some people who serve what they call goodness feel they do their best work by exterminating the agents of badness. This category produces holy warriors.

Some people serve goodness by drawing power to themselves, so that they may have a powerful influence on human affairs.

Some people serve goodness by eschewing power and wealth. They try to lead by example. Some of them through the centuries have generated compelling legends over which later generations argue bitterly, further slicing the concept of goodness into narrow strips of turf turned into battlefields and homelands of the One True Faith.

True Believers of any sect regard nonbelievers as disposable. We are not all in this together. No one will unify a human race made up of exclusive divisions. Only if every single human identified with its own unique existence and the shared experience of being human would the race have any chance at unity. And without unity we are doomed to die in blood and fire, as the holy warriors fervently hope.

Unity does not mean uniformity. Uniformity would mask differences and lead to internal stresses that would eventually break out in civil strife. Unity requires an easygoing attitude and thoughtful cooperation. Such an attitude does destroy zealotry. This frightens zealotry no end, leading to the saber rattling that threatens us in every age. The weapons of war get more horrific as technology advances. The horror deters humanity from flinging itself so readily into war, but some ideologies consider it more important to die for the right reason than to live for easygoing unity. If it really looks like the majority will choose to learn to get along, some true believer will be ready to push the button to send us all to judgment.

The current state of the Republicans illustrates the power that zealotry has gained over a nation once supposedly proud of its ability to give people of many backgrounds a place to flourish under the warm sun of freedom. The truth is darker, of course, but for a very short time around the early 1970s it did look like we meant it. Immigrants and strivers had risen during the 20th Century to make the mythical American Dream very gradually somewhat more inclusive.

In good times people tend to graph those rising curves of prosperity right up through the roof. The same is true of inclusiveness and social freedom. The social turmoil of the 1960s led to a nice party in the 1970s. The party atmosphere masked the fact that bitter resentment was festering in the darkness outside the various circles of light in which happy people danced. The forces of division and exclusion would not be denied. While the celebrants graphed their happiness up toward an amazing future in which a unified humanity cleaned up its own planet and then journeyed to the stars, the frustrated bigots marshaled their forces.

Force is the key to conflict. If the argument is not going your way, whip out a gun and shoot your opponent. Change the basis of discourse to one that suits you. If God is on your side you cannot lose. Even in death you will be exalted because you were doing the right thing. The other side claims God as well? Blasphemers! Theirs is a false god or a sinful misinterpretation of holy word. See how easy it is to keep the bloodletting legitimate?

As long as we praise warriors as the best among us we will remain locked in a death spiral. Thus the world cannot be saved. Humanity is doomed by its own idealism that extends even beyond death. As long as we force each other to prove our devotion by facing extermination we will continue to treat each other as prey.

How do you end hatred when so many people love it so much? Even people who claim to be tolerant will rise to some bait and show themselves willing to fight the ultimate battle, to end some other person's all-too-brief span or have their own ended, just to prove a point.

So what's to save?

Memorial Day 2011

On this solemn day of barbecues and trips to the beach, we honor those who serve our country, especially those in harm's way right now. That's what I keep hearing, anyway.

Actually today we remember the ones who didn't make it. Because that is commonly forgotten in the rush to try to make service members and veterans feel properly appreciated, every American holiday is simply turning into a combination Armed Forces Day and Veterans' Day. Is there any hope our species will just outgrow the bloodletting or are we hopelessly locked into the model of combat without end, amen?

We salute those who have been sacrificed to human combativeness. Honoring the fallen is the best we can do, even though it comes a distant second to actually learning to get along.

The Surgin' General's Report

Sorry, anti-war protesters. We can't just turn it off and walk away from it.

Think of Iraq as a pile of dog shit. Think of the United States as a pair of lugged-sole shoes worn by an irresponsible child named George W. Bush. Think of America's situation as a white carpet. If we do not take all the time necessary to clean all the dog shit out of those shoe soles, we will track it all over the white carpet. True, we have every reason to be infuriated with little Georgie for wearing boots that weren't even really his and running through the pile of dog shit, but that does not change the reality of the present situation. Even if we yank little George up by the scruff of the neck so he quits dancing on the steaming pile of turd, the boots are still dirty.

Okay, now the metaphor breaks down, because you don't clean shit off your shoes while still standing in it, whereas the human chaos in Iraq does demand the direct involvement of responsible, mature, committed individuals to bring all receptive parties to a reasonable solution. It was just really fun to portray our unfortunate chief executive as a naughty boy in misappropriated shoes, stomping in shit.

George said one true thing when he told us the war would be long and difficult. He might have been referring to his Grand War on Terror, but it certainly applies to the Iraq conflict. Quagmires by definition slow your rate of travel. That does not mean you will be in them forever. But expect to pick up a few leeches and fight off a few crocodiles as you slog along in search of that elusive higher ground.

While the Iraq war evolves, terrorist attacks in other parts of the world are investigated after the fact or foiled in advance by diligent police work. Terrorist operatives theoretically have access to a number of sources of useful tools to create devastation. We can't be everywhere at once. We have to hope we manage to be in the right place at the right time. Iraq wasn't it, but it's a mess we now have to clean up properly if we can.

War is running for office

The war in Iraq has hired a publicist in the form of Freedom's Watch. This group of conservatives has appointed itself to polish up the image of endless armed conflict and thereby enlist voter support. You've probably seen the advertisements on television.

Imagine what the Vietnam War would have been like with a better image consultant. We could still be engaged over there, too.

First let me say that absolutely everyone associated with this endeavor should either be over there in uniform or have close family members over there in uniform. When they show us amputees, paraplegics and bereaved parents they should acknowledge that they are urging us to support the creation of more amputees, paraplegics and bereaved parents. The creators of these ads owe it to them and to us to prove their own commitment with more than money and purchased words.

And who is the ad agency making this stuff? Who collects a paycheck and then goes home to suburbia after crafting these appeals so filled with leaps of faith and flawed logic? Is it just another job when you do your best to persuade the masses to keep answering the call of duty that will doubtless get a number of them maimed and killed? If it is a noble labor of patriotism, do it in your spare time, for free.

Victory happens either when the losers are completely annihilated or when their side consents to have lost. Therefore, any conflict can go on forever as long as participants on both sides keep picking up weapons.

By declaring any withdrawal from a pointless conflict "surrender," Freedom's Watch actually sides with the enemy by conceding to their terminology. By being narrow-minded, stiff-necked and freely bellicose using other people's children, Freedom's Watch is actually very bad for the country they claim to support so fervently. They close off options in a way utterly contrary to the style of open discourse we've been told is our way of life. Of course we know it isn't our way of life and it never has been. Our way of life has been to shoot our way out and make up fancy stories about it afterwards since the 17th Century. We're just four centuries better at it now.

National Service

As the Viet -- I mean Iraq war drags on, more politicians are talking about instituting mandatory national service. This is a euphemism for a military draft.

If national service just meant cutting your hair, going through a brief period of physically demanding training, peeling potatoes and letting irritable assholes order you around for a few years it might not be so bad. But military service means that you may be ordered to kill people. That's what "serving your country" means: killing people you're told to kill because someone at the top of the chain of command has determined that they need to be killed.

The unswerving obedience to authority necessary to military service is utterly antithetical to the concepts of individual liberty, self reliance and self determination that supposedly form the foundation of our national identity. For your period of national service you have to put aside all that and accept that the leaders directing you forward with fixed bayonets know exactly what they're doing, and that any harm you cause or suffer ultimately serves the greater good.

Even if you know it's not true, you have a contractual obligation to perform as directed, and a bond of trust with your fellow warriors. You have to accept that those two things make the lives of the people on the other end of your gun barrel less important than your own. At the same time, you accept that your individual life and health are less important than the political objectives you were sent to bolster.

Anything less than this life and death commitment is considered contemptible. In our long tradition of killing each other over all manner of differences of opinion, we have developed the habit of revering warriors and not questioning the concept of war itself. Of course the good guys will fight the bad guys. The bad guys started it. We're going to find out where they live and go kick their asses.

Conflicts do arise. A fighting force governed by strong authority will always prevail over one that tries to organize itself democratically or by consensus. A fighting force that fools itself into believing that bloodshed is glorious will have better morale than one that acknowledges the pain, suffering and probable injustice generated by armed conflict. We just can't afford to have sensitive soldiers.

A draft will not make our country a better place. It will not make our young adults better people. It certainly didn't do so in the Vietnam era. The war itself made some people better and others worse, whether they took part in it or opposed it. Those who believe in the inherent virtue of military service will insist that the experience will improve everyone concerned. The fact is that anyone who would rise to the noble ideal of military service would rise to the noble ideal of any endeavor. And those who show up just to get to kill legally, and the saboteurs and malingerers and hopelessly inept will find their level and their path within the system without changing their basic nature. You can challenge people to bring out their inner strength without putting a gun in their hand and an enemy in front of them. Why don't we think about how to do that?

Life is simple. Civilization is complicated

Two Marine reservists were discussing their Iraq experiences the other day. One works in the bike shop. The other rides with the local group.

Days before, I had said to the first one, "I wish I could feel there was some kind of guiding intelligence, some well-thought-out plan for what we're doing."

"There isn't," he assured me. He shook his head.

The second one always has a positive attitude. He does not seem to be someone who considers things too deeply.

As they chatted, the first Marine said that he'd go back to Iraq if he wasn't married.

"But then you get there and you go, 'why the fuck did I do this to myself?'" he said.

The second Marine said he'd had a good time on his fairly short tour.

"I kept saying to myself, I'm living the dream," he said.

Living the dream?

Combatant types enjoy the combat itself. Maybe some of them prefer to dress up and patrol around without a lot of hostile action, while others like to mix it up more. Neither of these guys goes around picking fights when they're at home. They're both people I would want on my side if something did break out. But how are you supposed to feel about people sent by their government into a dangerous situation when they seem to be having fun in it? The fate of nations and the vast sweep of political and philosophical forces means nothing to the fighters in the fight. Some don't care as long as they can get a job fighting. Others are just too busy trying to survive the challenges of each day to give any thought to a bigger picture.

We present this black-and-white notion of what we're doing and the people we're using to do it, but they don't react as uniformly as they are dressed and told to march. Some discover the experience traumatizes them. They come back recounting the horrors. At the other end of the scale, some people, even some who have been blown up, shot and mangled, accept it, even praise it.

As a civilization, we get selected groups to do things in the name of all of us, but each sub group is made up of smaller units all the way down to the individual. No leader can say with perfect confidence that every follower represents the same values at all. This is true of all participants in a conflict. Life itself may be a simple matter of finding food, shelter and whatever companionship one desires. Mix all those simple lives into something called a nation or an ideology and you get fundamentally insane activities like wars or political parties. It's hard to wave the flag when you don't know how the person looking at it will interpret it. It's hard to know how to treat a veteran when you don't know how they view themselves. You can't even say they all did it because they thought it was a great and noble thing to do. Some of them just like the line of work.