April 25, 2007
Not my child
Are we really talking about drafting our children?
Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
On my 18th birthday, I walked into the post office of a little town and registered with the Selective Service. It was 1984 and I was a high-school dropout with an all-day erection, a nicotine addiction, a bad haircut and no car. I was a shitty kid; I would have made an even shittier
soldier. But I walked out of that post office and shoved that crisp new card between my fake driver's license and my real one, lit an unfiltered Camel, took a deep drag and felt just like a man. There was no draft in 1984. I could afford to feel however I wanted.
Five years later, my daughter was born. She came into the world with some difficulty. Her mother labored for days before she was taken to the operating room for a C-section. I walked in just after the incision was made and stood at my wife's head, stroking her hair, for a matter of minutes that today seem like a second and when the puckered little face of my angel was pulled into the world, I knew not only that I had not yet been a man, but also that I would never be man enough. That was 18 years ago. My child will never walk into that post office. That is my solemn oath and affirmation.
There will always be wars and rumors of wars. Old men will start them and the youth will fight them and die. It will always be those youth who give the most and take the least who do the fighting and dying, and it will always be their mothers and fathers at home who suffer the unfathomable anguish of watching their sons and daughters leave home to learn to be killers. Not my child. Not while I breathe.
So what must Congressman John Murtha, the Democrat from Pennsylvania, think of men like me as he stumps for his H.R. 393, a bill that would reinstate a draft to constitute what Murtha calls "a citizen's army"? Surely he thinks less of me for never really serving my country. Surely he thinks me unpatriotic for being persuaded that I would never give my child to defend a thing, not even if that thing were an empire. I suppose I'm still not much of a man, but I'll tell you one thing: I'm man enough that all the John Murthas in Washington won't teach my daughter to kill. Not while I breathe.
Please don't anyone misunderstand and think I do not honor the service of every young man and woman called to risk their lives for the freedom I take for granted. The young men and women who answer that call deserve the highest exaltation of our country, as do the mothers and fathers who see their children off to war. But one never hears public accolades for those parents who keep their children out of harm's way. There are no plaques honoring the parents who sent money to their sons in Canada while those sons' friends died in Vietnam. Why is it more honorable to endure a child's death than to guard a child's life and more, a child's very humanity? I refuse to accept that it is a better thing to sacrifice life than to preserve it.
What madness have we wrought in our time that Congress can even consider something as unthinkable as a death lottery for our young? There was a better time for us as a people when our sons and daughters answered a call to give themselves willingly so that tyranny would not win the earth. This is not that time. I believe John Murtha forgets that fact. He must. How else could he conceive of anything so beastly as the idea of using our children to backfill the shortage of killers left by our campaign of monstrosity let loose upon the earth under one man's ruthless fiat? Well not my child. Not while I breathe.
How is it possible that we have forgotten to love our children? How have we come to look at them as a resource? They're our children—our children! Is it not enough that we will leave them a legacy of environmental catastrophe? Are we not content with forcing them to try to learn in schoolyards staffed with armed officers and security checkpoints at the front door? Are we not satisfied with poisoning them with chemicals, fattening them with slop and commercializing them with a barrage of sight and sound to prematurely sexualize their self-images and intensify their desire to consume? That's enough, God damn it! Our children already don't have much of a childhood. Must we steal their young adulthood? Not my daughter, John Murtha. Not while I breathe.
Like every other father, I wonder whether I will ever be as good a man as my child deserves me to be. I have had proud moments and some in which I have been tested and found
wanting. At times I thought I did quite well. At others, I thought I was of no account. On the whole I think I've done satisfactorily but not well enough to take credit for the wondrous young woman my daughter has become. She just is that special. And whatever failings I may have, I can still look into my baby's eyes and read the words "I love you, Daddy," written on her precious heart and know that I would sooner deliver myself to the gates of hell and fight the army of darkness bare-fisted than give my daughter to be trained to kill the children of others. I could never love this country or any country that much—not like I love her.
So you rest easy, baby girl. Revel in the splendor of your youth and triumph in the moment of young womanhood. Daddy won't let that happen, not now, not ever, not as long as I breathe.
Not my child
Are we really talking about drafting our children?
Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
On my 18th birthday, I walked into the post office of a little town and registered with the Selective Service. It was 1984 and I was a high-school dropout with an all-day erection, a nicotine addiction, a bad haircut and no car. I was a shitty kid; I would have made an even shittier
soldier. But I walked out of that post office and shoved that crisp new card between my fake driver's license and my real one, lit an unfiltered Camel, took a deep drag and felt just like a man. There was no draft in 1984. I could afford to feel however I wanted.Five years later, my daughter was born. She came into the world with some difficulty. Her mother labored for days before she was taken to the operating room for a C-section. I walked in just after the incision was made and stood at my wife's head, stroking her hair, for a matter of minutes that today seem like a second and when the puckered little face of my angel was pulled into the world, I knew not only that I had not yet been a man, but also that I would never be man enough. That was 18 years ago. My child will never walk into that post office. That is my solemn oath and affirmation.
There will always be wars and rumors of wars. Old men will start them and the youth will fight them and die. It will always be those youth who give the most and take the least who do the fighting and dying, and it will always be their mothers and fathers at home who suffer the unfathomable anguish of watching their sons and daughters leave home to learn to be killers. Not my child. Not while I breathe.
So what must Congressman John Murtha, the Democrat from Pennsylvania, think of men like me as he stumps for his H.R. 393, a bill that would reinstate a draft to constitute what Murtha calls "a citizen's army"? Surely he thinks less of me for never really serving my country. Surely he thinks me unpatriotic for being persuaded that I would never give my child to defend a thing, not even if that thing were an empire. I suppose I'm still not much of a man, but I'll tell you one thing: I'm man enough that all the John Murthas in Washington won't teach my daughter to kill. Not while I breathe.
Please don't anyone misunderstand and think I do not honor the service of every young man and woman called to risk their lives for the freedom I take for granted. The young men and women who answer that call deserve the highest exaltation of our country, as do the mothers and fathers who see their children off to war. But one never hears public accolades for those parents who keep their children out of harm's way. There are no plaques honoring the parents who sent money to their sons in Canada while those sons' friends died in Vietnam. Why is it more honorable to endure a child's death than to guard a child's life and more, a child's very humanity? I refuse to accept that it is a better thing to sacrifice life than to preserve it.
What madness have we wrought in our time that Congress can even consider something as unthinkable as a death lottery for our young? There was a better time for us as a people when our sons and daughters answered a call to give themselves willingly so that tyranny would not win the earth. This is not that time. I believe John Murtha forgets that fact. He must. How else could he conceive of anything so beastly as the idea of using our children to backfill the shortage of killers left by our campaign of monstrosity let loose upon the earth under one man's ruthless fiat? Well not my child. Not while I breathe.
How is it possible that we have forgotten to love our children? How have we come to look at them as a resource? They're our children—our children! Is it not enough that we will leave them a legacy of environmental catastrophe? Are we not content with forcing them to try to learn in schoolyards staffed with armed officers and security checkpoints at the front door? Are we not satisfied with poisoning them with chemicals, fattening them with slop and commercializing them with a barrage of sight and sound to prematurely sexualize their self-images and intensify their desire to consume? That's enough, God damn it! Our children already don't have much of a childhood. Must we steal their young adulthood? Not my daughter, John Murtha. Not while I breathe.
Like every other father, I wonder whether I will ever be as good a man as my child deserves me to be. I have had proud moments and some in which I have been tested and found
wanting. At times I thought I did quite well. At others, I thought I was of no account. On the whole I think I've done satisfactorily but not well enough to take credit for the wondrous young woman my daughter has become. She just is that special. And whatever failings I may have, I can still look into my baby's eyes and read the words "I love you, Daddy," written on her precious heart and know that I would sooner deliver myself to the gates of hell and fight the army of darkness bare-fisted than give my daughter to be trained to kill the children of others. I could never love this country or any country that much—not like I love her.So you rest easy, baby girl. Revel in the splendor of your youth and triumph in the moment of young womanhood. Daddy won't let that happen, not now, not ever, not as long as I breathe.
1 comment:
thats beautiful
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