Friday, June 29, 2007
Opinion

Uncle Sam wants you

The Marine dropped to one knee and presented the folded flag to my mother...

Staff Sgt. Christian Curtright of New Orleans, Louisiana (R) along with another soldier in the 1st Infantry Division, both “surge” soldiers, play with an Iraqi boy during a home search in Baghdad. CREDIT: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

By Stephanie Ramage

The Marine dropped to one knee and presented the folded flag to my mother.

It was bitterly cold and the wind whipped at the U.S. Army greatcoats of my brother, a sergeant major, and my nephew, a captain. My oldest brother, a former Marine like my father, was not in uniform but stood at attention until the last note of taps faded. And my mother sat with the flag in her lap, hands folded across its broad stripes and bright stars.

Occasionally, I get letters from readers asking why I do not enlist. I’m 40 and I have a child but, they reason, if I support the war in Iraq, I should sign up. The reason that I do not, as this memory of my father’s funeral in 2003 should show, is that I do more for the people I love—three of whom are in active duty at this moment (my niece having just graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy)—by writing this column.

According to the Department of Defense, the United States, with more than 300 million citizens, relies on about 1.4 million active-duty soldiers, in all branches of the military combined, for protection. Families like mine serve in disproportionate numbers. If you and yours aren’t doing your part, don’t sweat it—some immigrant has picked up your slack: According to the Pentagon, nearly 22,000 active-duty U.S. soldiers are not even citizens of this country. They are immigrants who have not yet been granted citizenship status. They are willing to die for the freedom that you take for granted.

Most people who read this couldn’t care less if we win or lose in Iraq, whether soldiers in this war are weighed down with the gnawing worms of shame that American civilians and politicians heaped on those who served in the Vietnam War. For those people, it’s OK for another generation of American soldiers to come home like that, veterans of a war that is best not talked about, and if it is mentioned, only in the most apologetic, embarrassed tones, a war that one can only justify having participated in if one is willing to take up the bullhorn and denounce it. The unwelcome truth is that there is a difference in the way that defeated soldiers—even if they are only defeated by their own country—and undefeated soldiers feel about themselves.

I care tremendously about them, because they are my family and I want them to win.

I don’t show it with magnetic ribbons on my car or bumper stickers or flags—my World War II veteran dad opposed using the flag for trivial decoration because it is sacred, a sentiment that he passed on to me. Instead, I show my support for the troops by supporting this war because I know how hard it is to feel good about yourself when so many people, comfortably out of the line of fire, are saying that what you’re doing is wrong.

Many of those detractors have worthy intentions. They oppose the war because they believe that American lives are being lost for no good reason. They do care about the soldiers, but they don’t seem to understand how their opposition to the war affects the performance and the very safety of our troops.

I am not a policy wonk, nor am I a soldier, but I do know that the greatest military the world has ever known can win this war, if we believe they can. That sounds trite, an airy-fairy notion that believing can make it so, but the thing that soldiers need more than anything is our belief in them. Establishing order and peace and freedom in Iraq are all good things and we should be proud of our efforts there. Perhaps it is true that it’s too late for that—too late to believe, too late to hope, too late to point out that all the mistakes we’ve made are nothing next to the magnificence of the American dream that we can surely deliver. Or is it? SP

Stephanie Ramage is the news editor of
The Sunday Paper. E-mail her at stephanie
ramage@sundaypaper.com.