ATLANTA — I learned important things a few days ago about America’s finest young men and women, and its terrible chosen war in Iraq. In one of those chance human encounters that remain with you for life, I shared a fleeting fast food dinner at an airport with an American soldier, who helped me understand better what makes most ordinary human beings special, and most political leaders disgraceful.
I had a wait of several hours one evening while changing planes at Atlanta airport, and made my way to the restaurants. I chose my usual combination of three kinds of Chinese chicken, with rice and vegetables, for $5.95, marveled again at America’s many contributions to global civilization, and sat at a small empty table. Minutes later a young American soldier in uniform carrying a plate of pizza slices asked if the empty seat across from me was being used. It was free, I said, and he was welcome to use it.
I remembered my university days in the USA during the Vietnam war, when civilians often found it awkward to engage in conversation with soldiers on duty in a controversial war. I also knew that what the soldiers were going through in their own lives and minds was infinitely more difficult and demanding.
I thought that I could learn something from him, and perhaps he would like to chat with a stranger. The young man of Italian-American heritage could not have been more than 22 years old. It turned out he was in the reserves but had been called to fulltime duty because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Was he on his way to or from a war, I asked? No, he had not gone overseas yet, but was expecting to go soon.
Would he be on the front fighting? Probably not, he replied, because his specialty was human resources and personnel affairs, including promotions and nominations of soldiers for awards, commendations and medals. He was now in the midst of several months of training on new management systems his unit has acquired. But if he was sent to Iraq, he had to be prepared to kill and be killed, and would deal with that eventuality if it happened.
I learned that he had dropped out of college in one of the western mountain states after he had started as a journalism student. Instead he enrolled in a part-time college course in athletics education, so he could work and support his young family.
Not sure why, perhaps just an instinctive gesture of human solidarity among those who had experienced war’s ugly dangers, I told him I lived in Beirut, Lebanon, where I also did journalism, though my perspective as a civilian was less harrowing than his as a soldier. We agreed that war was a terrible thing and did not resolve matters in most cases, though he carefully avoided voicing an opinion on the current war in Iraq. I tried to put him at ease by joking that I and others were working overtime to inform people about the futility of wars so that he could get back to fulltime studies and spend more time with his family.
He asked me about how it was “over there” in the Middle East. I told him it was just like America — a great land, full of wonderful, warm people, but often disfigured by the stupid decisions of sleazy politicians. He remained silent, focused on his pizza. He was part of a tradition of obeying orders in a system where the military was under the management of elected civilians. But I took his quiet, almost imperceptible, small nods between pizza bites as tacit agreement.
I became more bold in my questions. Was he scared to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, I asked? You’re always scared in such situations, he said, but you do your duty. That’s what he grew up learning was the American way, the right thing to do. He’d go if sent, and he’d fight if ordered to do so, but he sure wished they could solve their problems “over there” in a more peaceful way.
He finished his two pizza slices before I finished my three chicken varieties, and stood up to go. As he was getting up, almost under his breath, he shook his head in a gesture of unspoken but obvious bewilderment, looking down at the table and not at me, and quietly muttered that the USA had to bring its army back home because they had been there too long, and it was not working out well over there.
I quietly reciprocated his silent little nods, letting him know I agreed, but not saying so explicitly, so as not to make him feel awkward for making a direct political statement on the war he had to fight, and would fight if ordered to do so.
As we shook hands, he looked me in the eye and said sprightly, “a pleasure to talk to you, sir,” and went on his way, catching his flight, doing his duty, for his family and his country, a dignified, hard-working citizen-soldier.
I told him to take care of himself, and to be careful if he went “over there”, adding that it was indeed a pleasure to chat, and he went off. Quietly to myself, I thought that in fact it was not just a pleasure, but indeed an honor to chat with him.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 01 November 2006
Word Count: 901
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