cuchulainn
Member
http://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/op0329jac.html
''Disarming'' kids doesn't cancel reality
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 29, 2003
SCANDAL REIGNED in my girlfriend Lori's neighborhood when a few mothers decided that the playground should be a ``Gun Free Zone.''
No cowboy pistols. No plastic space guns. No thumbs and fingers locked and loaded. And no sticks!
In some areas (where the clientele was composed solely of liberals and the mommies of little girls) this may have been normal. Even a good idea. But the playground in question was at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Lori said that some of the moms thought the rule was an unenforceable drop in the bucket when the midshipmen were being trained to shoot real guns blocks away. When John Paul Jones was encrypted in the church basement. When boys would be boys. They thought it was enough that there weren't any real guns in the house where their kids had play dates.
After the playground moms talked past the issues of violence, past gun control, they got down to an unexpected issue. When a parent is in the military, is it hypocritical to forbid a child to play war? Shouldn't we admit exactly what these parents do for a living? Shouldn't we know where the money comes from?
Those moms didn't have to make a decision one way or another. The prospect of war and danger and risk seemed far, far away from their sunny play ground.
But now that the war in Iraq has begun, we military family members are confronting ourselves with what our spouses do for a living. Despite myriad collateral duties, their actual job is not to chip paint and sort mail. They aren't paid to plan the Navy Birthday Ball. Their foremost concern is not developing plastic recycling programs, or manufacturing jet noise, or performing as some kind of human laboratory for every social science experiment to come down the pike.
The people we married are professional warriors. Warriors!
These average-looking, freckled, balding, sweet people. The guys with whom we share a sink, fold socks and sign mortgage papers are paid (to loosely borrow the phrase from ``Patton'') not to die for their country but to make the other guy die for his country. Our sailors, soldiers, airmen, Coasties and Marines are trained to wage war -- swiftly, efficiently, in the most deadly manner possible.
We know them. They are good at what they do. They are not playing with guns. Their professionalism is not the issue. Ours is.
During the Persian Gulf War, some families of active-duty members and reservists were shown on TV sobbing that it was so unfair their husbands and wives were being deployed. That they weren't ready. That they had only been doing it for the money and they never expected a real war!
I could accept that. Sometime during the Cold War, we families got used to the security of the military as Just A Job. We could be excused for assuming no one would ever be called into a land war again.
But we live in a different world. Even our reservists were not surprised they'd been called up. When civilians asked them why they risked everything to join the military, the reservists said things such as, ``If not me, then who?''
Certainly, their families cry at the moment of departure. They should. Even if they never see any action, it is no joke to be deployed for six, eight, 10 months at a time. This is serious. This is personal. And we families are the ones who are aware of how personal it really is.
In the past week we have seen so many military families in the news exhibiting what amounts to their own brand of professionalism.
Some wish only that their husbands would finish the job and come home before the baby is born. Some worry about their imprisoned or missing soldiers and Marines. Some grieve.
I am so proud of them all because they are not surprised. They know what is on the line. They are as ready as they will ever be. They are tougher than they have ever been. They have no delusions -- only great hope.
For as much as our service members are warriors, we count on them to be peacemakers. And to come home. Soon.
Because we have plenty of socks still left to fold and that son of yours is still running around the playground with a stick.
Reach Jacey Eckhart via e-mail at [email protected]
