Letter to editor of SP Times concerning the warrior class
Posted: September 18th, 2007, 1:53 pm
Subject: "Rereading Vietnam"Perspective, 9/16/2007
I read Robert Kaplan's eloquent salute to America's centurion warrior class with mixed emotions. He illustrates the hard core of character that empowers courage and devotion to duty. But, as the warrior-philosopher James Stockdale uttered during his vice-presidential debate, "Who am I? Why am I here?", I wonder why he and his compatriots were not able to ask themselves that same introspection about the various missions they were assigned to.
I asked myself these things one day in Vietnam when I was talking with an Army chaplain at an artillery base we had flown into. Maybe it was the Star of David he was wearing, or maybe it was the elemental question he asked me: "Hi, what's your name?" I began to consider my role in that particular war, and after finishing my tour of duty in a dedicated manner, came home to join my brothers in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We, and the anti-war movement, and the American people and the congress, not Henry Kissinger, brought the POW's home.
Morality and ethics as a duty belong to citizen-soldiers, not just to liberal minded professional officers, to whom these essential qualifications should be germane. The missions to which we assign our courageous and brave young men and women demand prescience and scrutiny from the executive and congress. We are better than Roman imperialists. The label "centurion" should not qualify for the warrior-elite in a healthy democracy.
J W
© Copyright 2007 St. Petersburg Times.
I read Robert Kaplan's eloquent salute to America's centurion warrior class with mixed emotions. He illustrates the hard core of character that empowers courage and devotion to duty. But, as the warrior-philosopher James Stockdale uttered during his vice-presidential debate, "Who am I? Why am I here?", I wonder why he and his compatriots were not able to ask themselves that same introspection about the various missions they were assigned to.
I asked myself these things one day in Vietnam when I was talking with an Army chaplain at an artillery base we had flown into. Maybe it was the Star of David he was wearing, or maybe it was the elemental question he asked me: "Hi, what's your name?" I began to consider my role in that particular war, and after finishing my tour of duty in a dedicated manner, came home to join my brothers in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We, and the anti-war movement, and the American people and the congress, not Henry Kissinger, brought the POW's home.
Morality and ethics as a duty belong to citizen-soldiers, not just to liberal minded professional officers, to whom these essential qualifications should be germane. The missions to which we assign our courageous and brave young men and women demand prescience and scrutiny from the executive and congress. We are better than Roman imperialists. The label "centurion" should not qualify for the warrior-elite in a healthy democracy.
J W
© Copyright 2007 St. Petersburg Times.
