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The following letter was written for a nephew on the eve of his departure for military service.
Dear David:
My best arguments having failed to dissuade you from joining the Army at the height of an unjust and illegal war in Iraq, I want to write you a farewell and Godspeed. I would say I am praying for your safety, but I can't believe in a deity that intervenes in personal matters, so I can only say I hope for that with all my heart. Wherever your military service takes you, whether it puts a rifle, a medical kit, an Arabic dictionary or a missile guidance system in your hands, I know you will always do your best and act out of the highest human motive, which is altruism, the desire to help one's fellow human beings.
Though you have declared your goal is to make the Special Forces and work in the front lines of nation-building where democracy confronts Islamist extremism, I suggest that your success, and maybe your survival, will now depend less on your idealism than on a clear-eyed understanding of an American soldier's life at this point in time.
People join the military for a great variety of reasons: Some want to nobly defend their country against attack; some seek training and education otherwise unavailable to them; some want to follow a hallowed family tradition; some crave to be heroes; some want to take big risks to experience life at its limits; some are ambitious for high rank and power; some want to put a past emotional hurt or a psychological injury to rest; some want a ticket out of ghetto life— to get a job that they hope will provide a credential and an employable skill for the future; some buy in to the "benevolent policeman" story, helping the great unwashed masses in the world to become like us; some just want a license to kill.
I met all of the above as a reporter in Iraq.
Nobody says to himself, I want to sacrifice my life to keep Middle East petroleum pumping. Nobody says, I want to protect American oil interests so that energy corporations can keep profits up and Americans can consume more foreign oil without thinking of the consequences, and pollute the planet without paying the piper.
Nobody says, I want to give up my life for the global dream of American power dominating six billion people.
But seen starkly in the spotlight on the stage of history, that's the role our military now plays: Protect the agreeable tyrants, apply force to those leaders, countries and peoples who deny our special right to their fossil fuels, or challenge, God forbid, our oil empire.
Maybe that is why our government protects us from images of dead American soldiers coming home for burial from Iraq. Maybe that is why Bush and Cheney and the rest don't attend the funerals of the war dead. It's not advantageous for the American public to think too deeply on this matter. But you who are about to put yourself in harm's way must.
American politicians have applied all their wit, charm and chutzpah to forestalling fundamental debate on the real costs and benefits of American empire. And without any doubt, Americans have certainly benefited from this mighty empire of oil. It has provided them with the wealthiest economy in the history of the world, with a cornucopia of consumption and opportunities—not least with the psychological sense of well-being and power that is called the American Way of Life.
John Locke, who was not preoccupied with getting reelected, said it well: an empire consists of taking wealth and self-determination away from others to provide for your own power and pleasure.
The deal we have made with the devil for controlling foreign oil is rarely broached. Yet look back without filters over the past four years of war in Iraq, and what you see plainly in front of your nose is this: far from bringing democracy to Iraq, this plunge into catastrophe has debased our democracy at home. As William Appleman Williams wrote, "the cost of empire is not properly tabulated in the dead and the maimed, or in the wasted resources, but rather in the loss of our vitality as citizens. We have increasingly ceased to participate in the process of self government."
Whatever your motives in joining the military, once you are in uniform, you will find yourself firmly in the grip of three Olympian forces: luck and chance, politics, and a military machine that must act as a single force, blind to the needs of individuals. No one will ask your opinion of an operation, much less your opinion of American foreign policy. All that must wait until you return to the bosom of those who love you. When, it is my most fervent wish, you will become a leader in your generation's true task: building America's democratic culture, community and economy without violence to other people's natural and human rights.
Farewell.
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