Up for Assignment (Update)

This original post was tactless and hurt people who expected better from me, so I am taking it and the subsequent comments down.

I have been asked specifically to address three issues in this retraction and will do so in what follows.

Two things before I start:

I gave the false impression that my son’s possible assignment to Korea involved no work or risk. This is not true. While we don’t hear much in the media about the US military death rate in Korea, it is surprisingly high, and any time a military aircraft takes off, there’s reason to believe it will be shot at. My son was on his first deployment to Iraq when his first child was born and when she learned to walk, and he could have been shot at. I should have acknowledged this considerable sacrifice and risk.

More importantly, he does what he does because he loves his family and others. As one whose life has never been in danger for more than a couple of seconds, and that as often as not because of my own stupidity, I have to take my hat off to anyone, friend or foe, who willingly puts their lives at risk. My son fits that category. And while my post used him as an example, my quarrel is not ultimately with him but with the rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world (Ep 6:12). And indeed, one of life’s cruelest ironies is that those who sincerely desire to fight those beasts often find out too late they are allied with them; I could be one of those people.

First is the issue of soldiers shooting their own family members on order from their superiors. Do I believe my own son would shoot me if ordered to? As I said at the top of the original article, when I had no intention of revealing who the subject of the post was, he is a man who loves his family. I am a member of that family, and he has said that he loves me. So far so good.

But one of the themes running through the exchange was that a belief in the justice of politics causes good people to do horrible things. Chuck Colson was once accused of saying that he would run over (or some similar verb) his grandmother to serve Richard Nixon. In one of his books he says that he doesn't remember saying that, but yes, that was a reasonable assessment of his attitude at the time. Totalitarian societies, which ours is becoming, have always enlisted children as snitches against their parents, who then become prisoners and often corpses. And even though I like to think I don't believe in politics, I've done horrible things myself. (For all I know, turning against the war in Iraq, which I initially somewhat supported, is one of those horrible things, and I certainly have no reason to be proud of the way I conducted this post.)

But again, my son is also his mother's son, and not only has she proven herself fiercely protective of me as a person, he has shown himself willing to forgive many shortcomings in my fathering. So, with a nod to the caveat in the previous paragraph that was heavy on my mind and heart when I wrote the original post, I would say that my son would not shoot me, and I was wrong to imply that he would.

I also gave the impression that I consider all military people robots. Such was not my intention. To make quite the opposite point I said, "Those guards at Auschwitz probably played piano, painted in oils, wrote their grandmothers, gave flowers to their girlfriends, and did many things that we could consider commendable. We know they had Bible studies at their Hitler Youth camps and that the SS gave money to Christian missions." That is, military people are just like the rest of us. That was why my next sentence was, "What went wrong?" I also said to a commenter, whom I know to be the wife, sister, and foster mother of soldiers, "I rage at those who have deceived your loved ones, not at those you love." Being deceived is not the same as being a robot, as I, who either was or am currently deceived on the question of the Iraq war, can attest.

This leads into the third issue I was asked to address: soldiers who have gone out of their way to help local people. The only specific examples I have at hand come from the Bible. One was the Roman centurion whose servant was sick; when the Jewish leaders came to Jesus, they said that he should heal the servant because the centurion "loves our nation and built our synagogue" (Lk 7:3-5). Cornelius, similarly, "and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly." In fact, it was because his "prayers and gifts to the poor had come up as a memorial offering before God" that Peter was sent to him (Ac 10:2-4).

These were an armed agent of an empire that Daniel described as an inhuman beast with "large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left" (Dn 7:7). The Jews hated the Romans so much that, I am told, Rome had more trouble with Judea than with any other province, and one rebellion was so troublesome that the Romans ran out of wood to make crosses on which to kill the insurgents.

Yet God's holy Word says that two commanding officers were noteworthy for their love for their subjects. In fact, it is about the anonymous centurion that Jesus spoke his highest praise: "I have not found such great faith even in Israel" (Lk 7:9).

Are US soldiers any different? Of course not. While it is true that you can look on YouTube at atrocious behavior by US soldiers (some posted by those proud of it), you can also find videos of US soldiers doing their best to help the locals. You can read newspaper and magazine accounts of people who have risked and even lost their lives sincerely trying to help Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis. I don't think these stories are made up. Which group of soldiers is more typical? I don't know and probably never will. But I apologize for lumping the two groups together and will do my best not to do so in the future.

To summarize, my intention was not to hold any individual up to ridicule. I am grieved beyond words at the world my children will spend their adulthood in and at my own contributions to the way things are. I am doing my best to acknowledge my own sinfulness and give credit to those who disagree with me where it is due, but this time I simply got it wrong.