As long as there are people who will agree to fight to kill others for the whims of a nation state’s leaders, we will continue to have war.
Universal soldier: GI in Afghanistan. Photograph by Max Whittaker / Corbis. Image from The Guardian.
He’s five foot two and he’s six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He’s all of thirty-one and he’s only seventeen
Been a soldier for a thousand years
— “Universal Soldier” by Buffy Saint-Marie
Reading about Bowe Bergdahl in the papers since his release from captivity on May 31, made me think of another soldier, whose memorial service I attended on June 9. Jack had been in Special Forces for many years. He had learned Arabic and Farsi as part of his training, which included joint operations with the British, the Saudis, the Australians, and others in parts of Africa he didn’t talk much about.
He did not serve in Afghanistan, but he was in both of the Iraq wars. From the time of the first Iraq war, the one that George H. W. Bush had the good sense to end as soon as its measured purpose — driving Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait — had been accomplished, Jack had neurological symptoms associated with what came to be called Gulf War Syndrome.
Continue reading
