There was a Charlie Rose interview
re-run on US TV this last week in which he interviewed a group of US
soldiers who participated in the battles of Fallujah.
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| Fallujah Occupation |
The men were impressive, even
formidable. They were physically imposing, sober, restrained, tough,
traveled, experienced with the killing of people, bright, knowing,
articulate, probably all in their late twenties. Many of my students
were exactly like them, but veterans of Viet-Nam rather than
Iraq.
Rose asked them at the end of the
interview for their main conclusion, the big take-away lesson from
their experiences in Iraq. Their answer was: We have to start
becoming very thoughtful, and discuss it very carefully, before we go
to war.
That statement left me physically
shaken. How is it possible that such very bright young men can go into
someone else's country - kill, wound, and dispossess people there, not
to mention risk their own lives, limbs and souls - without working it
through very earnestly before they do it?
Further, why wouldn't Charlie Rose, the
most intelligent and informed interviewer on US television, ask these
young men that
question?
I've witnessed this, and thought about
this, so many times in the past that it seems that I shouldn't be
astonished by it. But it shocks me more than ever, and I think the
reason it does is because my mind is increasingly able as I grow
older to see its further implications, to take larger perspectives on
its meaning for the future as well as the present and the past.
The hopeful bit is that youth may
someday, widely and earnestly, identify and ask the question, which
is the first step to solving not just this but untold other problems.
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