Today I was at my grandfather’s 75th birthday party. It was fun, I got to see a lot of relatives I haven’t seen in a long time, etc. But that wasn’t really what interested me today. While talking to my cousin, who recently finished his job training with the National Guard, I found out that he’s being deployed to Iraq. In less than two weeks. And I found out that he volunteered to go.

His National Guard unit is actually already deployed in Iraq. But he wasn’t there, and they told him on Monday that he wasn’t going to be deployed. But there have been some injuries in his unit, and he’s going to replace them. He could have chosen not to go, but he had put himself on a volunteer list to go as soon as needed, and his name came up.

Is this bravery or stupidity? I don’t really know. On one hand, I feel a lot of respect for him, and I know I would never put myself in the same position. On the other hand, part of me legitimately wonders what he’s thinking. After all, if the guys he’s replacing were injured, that obviously indicates that there’s some risk involved to what he’s doing. And while it’s entirely possible that I’m just a chicken, maybe there’s a good reason why I would never volunteer to go. Throughout the conversation, he seemed both at ease and extremely proud. I could tell he was comfortable with his decision. More comfortable than I.

I know a couple other deployed soldiers, but I never got to talk to them right before they left. But I grew up with this kid, hanging out at his house, even going to school with him for a few years. He was always a very smart kid. But he was a jokester, a bit of a clown, the kind of kid you worried about keeping away from the flammable materials in your garage. I always expected he’d turn into a typical fun, harmless adult goofball. Not the sort of direct, comfortable, and stoic adult that I saw today.

It’s a lot easier to judge soldiers’ actions when they aren’t people you know. His mom knows this too, I can tell. You could see the tension in her face. She doesn’t want him to go. Neither do I, though I wouldn’t have let him know that. We all want people to defend our country for us (opinions about the war besides, I’d feel the same way about anyone I knew being deployed). We just don’t want it to be anyone we know.

Is apprehension the spawn of wisdom, or just the resistance of habit?

Posted on September 5th, 2004 by Lee
Tagged: Politics, Society