In my last post I
mentioned a presentation I did for a writing conference in 2007.
That small effort had a great impact on the direction my writing has
taken since, in no small part because of the effect my words had on
Alexandra Fuller. I'm now reading her latest memoir:
Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness and am, once again
bolled over. Ms. Fuller's upbringing in civil-war torn Rhodesia
(now Zimbabwe) was punctuated by naked fear and ever-present
violence. Her recollections -- beautifully written -- are
riveting. I am humbled that someone of her experience took my
small contribution to that conference so very seriously. On
re-reading it, however, I suppose I managed to voice similar appeals
for sanity that are a recurring theme in her writing.
Accordingly, I'm moved to share what I wrote via this blog.
Here it is:
"Terry [Tempest Williams] asked me to
compose a short essay—a 'witness' as she put it—to capture a
perspective informed by my time in the military. To say that I was
intimidated at such a request would certainly be an understatement,
to have told someone of Ms. Williams' stature and persuasive
abilities that I was not up to it wasn't really an option.
I'm uneasy
commenting on matters military. My time in uniform didn't include
exposure to those iconic battlefield experiences that provide a
certain visceral authority to this kind of writing. With one
exception, which I'll explain shortly, I soldiered from behind a
desk, employed principally as a staff officer, with one fascinating
stint as a pseudo-diplomat. Through those years, the air force did
its best to refashion me into their version of a warrior, but,
despite their best efforts, it just didn't take. I was always a
mite too bookish, my eyes were bad, and I had little aptitude for
physical exertion under stress. Also, I harbored an intense dislike
for authority and detested chaos--qualities that left me distinctly
unqualified for precisely the conditions where real warriors
flourish. How I lasted as long as I did is still a mystery to me.
Fortunately, the
air force was willing, early on, to provide me with an education.
They sent me to college where there was some hope that I might learn
to think and write and, in that capacity, prove to be of some use to
those that paid my tuition. In this one area the needs of the
service and my own inclinations met. In my experience every branch
of the military puts a high premium on education and, with certain
subtle caveats, independent thought. And, if you think about it,
that's a good thing. You wouldn't want anything less in a
profession whose ultimate--but certainly not sole--purpose is the
skilled application of shockingly lethal weapons under circumstances
that are typically deadly and chaotic.
I
had my time with the worst of these weapons—the nuclear ones. For
nearly five years I worked in the little subterranean missile launch
centers dotted around Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska. I spent
hours watching the little lights that kept me posted on the happy
status of enough nuclear firepower to make Hiroshima look like a
Fourth of July fireworks display. That kind of sight should give a
thinking person plenty of food for thought, enough in my case to fuel
a lasting case of mental heartburn. Fortunately, at that same time
I was also enrolled in graduate school, and it was there that I began
to do some serious thinking about the nature of the weapons I was
tending.
The
upshot of all this is that I reached some conclusions that helped me
finish my time with those missiles without losing my soul or my
sanity. It seemed clear to me that the very existence of men like
me at the trigger of modern weapons called, like never before, for
the braking effect of governments and their citizens working in
concert—as communities—to mitigate, if not solve, the kinds of
problems that lead to the actual use of these things. The time had
clearly passed, I concluded where great, or especially super powers
had any business striking out on their own against real or perceived
threats. There's nothing earth-shattering here--it's the
foundational logic of the United Nations and many regional
organizations. I just came to see the essential logic of it
reflected in the multicolored lights in my launch center.
I
was fortunate, in the ensuing years, to attempt to put some of what I
preached into practice tackling various problems, mundane and
otherwise, with military alliances and non-governmental organizations
on four continents. I didn't move mountains, but I did try to make
a difference, and by the time I left the service I was convinced,
naively it turns out, that our country would continue to play a
mature role based on cooperation with coalitions of like-minded
nations. We'd manage, somehow, to keep danger at bay, hoodlums
bottled up, and the dogs of war more-or-less quiet in their kennels.
It seemed the only practical course for real security and I never
imagined our government would see it otherwise.
Imagine
my despair over the present debacle in Iraq. It seems that
everything I learned and tried to accomplish meant nothing to a new
generation of political leaders, and that, in fact, they have chosen
to ignore, denigrate, and generally trample every precept of
cooperation and restraint I had come to view as unassailable.
No, they haven't unleashed the most feared weapons, those awful
missiles--not yet--but the lethality of the war we still wage
and the bloody civil war that shows no sign of slowing provide scant
comfort. Ask the hundreds of thousands of innocents who had no
part in 9/11 who have lost loved ones about their take on weapons of
mass destruction. Do they care how the dead got that way? Ask
the relatives of our own war dead about these losses, now over 3500
and rising, that we continue to suffer long after the attacks on
that September day. Ask why this war continues in the face of
certain evidence that the books were cooked and that these leaders
openly and cynically circumvented the judgment of those in the
military who argued for a different course.
If
there is a bright spot in any of this, it is the indignation and
outrage so evident in the outcome of the last national elections.
We are still a long way from pulling our troops out of Iraq, and an
even greater distance from seeing some semblance of stability return
to that country and that region. There are no quick fixes; we've
made a horrendous mess and the echoes will sound for generations.
But the only choice we really have--and I've never lost faith in
this--is to renew our trust in the values of human community, an
empowered and determined international community, which has an
all too certain common share in the fate of this planet. It is the
only path to real peace, and the only way out of all this darkness."
As I said, I wrote the above in 2007. Some things have changed -- we are largely out of Iraq now -- but sadly, the carnage has not stopped. The war in Afghanistan continues as a ghastly and dispirited drain on our national conscience. Iraq, without our combat troops, teeters daily on the brink of return to civil war. Regardless, I remain convinced that that my trust in the values of human community, practiced with determination by the community of nations, are the only way forward. I see no other way.
