That's No Excuse

So there's this woman down in Texas camped out in the President's driveway or something. The story goes that her kid died in Iraq and she's got some questions for W. At least that was yesterday's story. Today's story is that she's actually already met with him in the past, that she's being spirited off to a hotel at night and brought back in the morning, and that she is in fact a loon.

Nice to see that the mud slingers on both sides haven't lost their touch.

In discussion of this vigil and its merits there is a line of conversation that keeps coming up that has really began to bug me. One side says:

"My child ought not to have died in Iraq!"

and then the other side says

"The US has an all volunteer force, they knew what they were getting into when they joined."

I find a disturbing lack of symmetry in that argument.

I mean, yes, people that join the armed forces, or for that matter right now, or international security firms are doing so of their own volition. They ought not be surprised when they are called on to do the job they signed up for. And yes, there is no draft, and nobody made them volunteer - the odd family pressure aside. But I think the current leadership is missing the boat when they defend the possibility of casualties with the "all volunteer" argument.

Even the "what did you think you were signing up for?" argument hasn't rung real true in the past. Round about the first Gulf War, the first major engagement since the all volunteer army, there were many people that refused to fight when called upon because they hadn't thought we would go to war. They were signing up for job training, travel, or money for college. The fighting part always seemed like a distant improbability.

At that time, I had little patience for this argument. You join the Army, you might go to war.

This time though there are subtle differences, and they make all the difference in the excuses.

People did not volunteer to go to a war of choice. We haven't heard the "shouldn't" thing nearly as much from Afghanistan as from Iraq. That's because people believe we had a legit reason to be in Afghanistan, whereas we went to Iraq on our own timetable, without any real exigency - whatever mushroom cloud Condeleeza was afraid of.

People did not volunteer to go to a mismanaged campaign. The supplies, armored vehicles, body armor, troop numbers, issue after issue that comes up highlights how the leadership has mishandled the Iraq mission. Nobody thinks they are going to be killed due to incompetence when they volunteer. Their parents have a right to get upset after the fact when that is the case.

People didn't volunteer for the reserve or to stay beyond their tour so they could be full time soldiers in Iraq. The stop loss orders aside, there real story here is about the National Guard and Reserve. While these forces have always been there as a contingency, it would be very difficult to argue that their mission hasn't been significantly refocused for the Iraq war. Someone who signed up to help with flood victims and give "one weekend a month and two weeks a year" might be double peeved to find themselves on their second tour of a mismanaged, improperly supplied, war of choice.

So yes, it is an all volunteer force, and yes people need to know what they are getting into when they sign up. But the voices crying out about the injustice are not upset that their child died in service to their country. They are upset that they died as a part of this campaign, and "its an all volunteer force" does not address that at all.