A New Kind of War
by Jacquelyn Mitchard

It was only a coincidence, but my son, 18 last month, received greetings from the selective service system just three days after the United States found itself more or less at war, with a many-tentacled enemy who hasn't quite been identified.

It wasn't a draft notice, only the customary request for identification all boys (and why, come to think of it, only boys?) receive when they reach their first majority.

And yet, I took the notice in two fingers, the way I would a dead rodent. It suddenly had a much more sober and sinister significance than it would have only a week before, when it would have been a sobering part of the rite of becoming a man.

But it now may mean something else. We hear that this war may be fought on many fronts, with missiles and war ships, on desert sands and in mountain caverns. We hear, in some cases from people whose eagerness is palpable, that it may last a very, very long time. That many, many lives (referred to as "collateral damage") My son may well be out of high school while Operation Golden Eagle (no… now called Perpetual Freedom, Infinite Justice having been deemed too ephemeral, too New Age) is still in full tilt.

Whatever its name, President Bush has described a "new" kind of war. But when I read my son's notice, I thought, there is no new kind of war.

There is only one kind of war. No matter how far off the targets, or how sophisticated the weapons or intelligence, war is a dragon that eats the lives of young men and women so impetuous and idealistic they do not realize those lives haven't had a chance to begin.

And that is why when I see the giant projected images of American flags on the sides of houses, or banners hanging from the balconies from Manhattan apartments, a part of my soul rises and whispers, "Ich bein ein New Yorker." But a part of my soul shudders, too and remembers the Tet, Offensive, Phnom Pen, the last plane from Saigon. This is not because I am a bleeding heart. I'm only a mother, with a heart bleeding.

Many years ago, I was The Emerald Isle, an Irish bar in Chicago that no longer exists, listening to the Clancy Brothers, many of whom now are dead, singing a song by Dominic Behan, brother of the renowned poet Brendan Behan.

It is called "The Patriot Game," The first lines were something like this: "Come all you young rebels, and list while I sing/For the love of one's country/Is a terrible thing/It banishes fear, with the speed of a flame/And it makes us all part of the patriot game."

Now, don't forget the Clancys were Irish Republicans to the core. And yet they knew that their just cause was "terrible," in the classic sense - that is awe-inspiring and yet horrific. They sympathized with the six counties still under British rule; but they recognized the toll.

Do we? Or has our foresight collapsed under the surreal and constantly repeated images of the collapsing towers, the gallant and sweat-stained heroes, the white dust, the pitiful body bags? Have the stars and stripes, so poignantly powerful to every American, drawn crosses over our eyes?

Even longer ago, I heard a radio broadcast on the station I listened to as a teen - back when AM was FM. Larry Lujak, who was a nutty Chicago rock jock but also a thoughtful man, said, regarding the war in Vietnam, "You know, it's all us old guys who sit around saying, 'Let's bomb 'em into the Stone Age! But why do we send the young? I don't think there's a father in the world who wouldn't, given the chance, go in place of his son." He concluded, referring to his son, Scott, who later died in an accident, "I know I would."

Today, I got a hysterical but again terribly serious e-mail from my pal Franny, the mother of 17-year-old Ted. She said she believed that peri-menopausal women would make grand warriors, and she was ready to sign up. "If anyone should get to maim our teenage sons, it's us -- moms, not terrorists. Given hormonal flux and general pissed-offed-ness, I could kill without remorse. And it would be better not to have to go to prison afterward. The government need not pay me, but I must have a comfortable bed and a sixer, preferably premium, before bed."

And I agree.

At dinner the night Rob got his selective service notice, we discussed that, during the Civil War, wealthy young men might pay "seconds," or poor neighbors, to go to war in their stead. He asked if people still do that. I said no, and no one morally could. He told me, "But I hear people all the time saying they can't wait to sign up! So why should people who have no particular wish to kill anybody be forced to?"

 

So, if we really must have a new kind of war, let us be the ones to fight. Thirtysomethings and fortysomethings.

You don't need six-pack abs or the ability to run ten miles carrying a forty-pound pack to fire a missile. We're smarter; we're more cautious; we might be better able to prevail and survive. And many of us are in decent enough shape. We've chased youth by running and crunching. Let us second our sons and daughters. Since I first raised this subject in a newspaper column, I've received dozens of letters. Many of them have offered me to buy me one-way tickets to any other country, because clearly I am not an American. I have been told that I am a coward; my son is a coward, and reminded that many brave men died so that I might have the freedom to speak my spoiled and ungrateful opinions. I have been told that there is one kind of patriotism - their kind - and that those who don't agree with it better get ready to make huge sacrifices or get out of the way. These letters come from some of the same correspondents who insist that there is only one way to salvation, one true religion, one legitimate political party.

None of these letters has come from young men of draft age. Those few mailings in support of my ramblings have come from many women and a few men with sons of that age.

And yet, I am a patriot. I don't believe the outrage of innocents in America can go unpunished. And I offered to go to avenge that outrage. Riled, I would make terror cultists wish their mothers had never met their fathers. I think there are others of the same mind. I also want my sons to grow up, to do what I've already lived enough life to have done - watch a sunset when they've fallen in love, see their newborns for the first time, experience the thrill of achievement at a job or an art. I don't believe it is my sons' duty to protect my future, father the reverse.

I no longer have the passion and vehemence of youth that would make me wish to take arms in my own hands for any reason but to protect. I know, better than my sons, what fear is. I would do harm only if I had to. If indeed we all must play the patriot game, let those who have strived and built and created the stakes that are now so high play for them, if they wish.

As we say here in Wisconsin, let's salvage the seed corn.

 

 

 

*Jacquelyn Mitchard's venture into fiction with her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, marks the latest evolution in her diverse and distinguished career as a writer. A native of Chicago, Mitchard graduated from the University of Illinois and Rockford College and became a newspaper reporter. From 1984 to 1988 she was metro reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Her weekly column, "The Rest of Us," has appeared in the Journal for over a decade and will be nationally syndicated starting in September 1996. From 1989 to 1993, Mitchard was the speechwriter for now U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, while Shalala was Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. Mitchard has also been a contributing editor for Parenting magazine since 1990; she is a regular columnist for TV Guide and has been a regular contributor to such national magazines as Money, Self, and Woman's Day. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family and a biography of Jane Addams for teenagers. She has also written two screenplays with her writing partner, Amy Paulsen: A Serpent's Egg for cable television and Typhoid Mary for feature development. Her essay on adoption was anthologized in the Adoption Reader. The mother of five children, Mitchard lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is at work on a second novel entitled The Most Wanted. Her new novel. "A Theory of Relativity" was published by HarperCollins this summer.