I'm no coward

There's an odd sort of understanding silence between combat veterans.  There are reasons you don't talk about certain things you've seen, and certain things you've done.  As with any system, there will be aberrations- those who revel in how many 'hadjis' they've dropped, and those who immediately and loudly proclaim that what they've just gone through will scar them for life.  For most, though, any decision to actually talk about what goes on in combat comes with a very heavy price.  First, you have to admit that something bothers you about it.  You have to admit that something didn't feel right, and you need to get it off your chest.  That's a big can of worms to open up, because combat veterans are universally afraid of one thing - the realization that what we just did might have been the wrong thing to do, and that "following orders" wasn't a good enough reason to do it.  That's the bogeyman lurking under the bed, and that's one reason among many that we usually don't encourage a big touchy-feely heart-to-heart about that mission we all know went too far.  That's why there are no Oprah or Dr. Phil moments in the military.

When you hear civilians talking about people in uniform, you often hear language designed to incite emotion of one kind or another.  Words like "coward", "hero" and "monster" fly about like bullets in a firefight.  I'd wager a full nine times out of ten, those sorts of words are coming out of the mouth of someone who has never logged a day in a uniform.  At the risk of sounding condescending: if you've been there, you know that the lines between cowardice and heroism blur fast and often in the "line of duty".  I'm always amused when someone who's never aimed a weapon at another human being tells me I'm a coward for refusing to do it again.  They simply don't understand how silly they look leveling such empty accusations.  When it comes down to it, even if you did know every thing that I did every day I was in the military, you still can't know if I'm a coward or a hero unless you know what's in my heart, too.  It's not enough to know what I did- you need to know why as well.  Unfortunately, "coward" is a word the public responds to, and so it gets dragged out often by those who have the least business getting their fingerprints all over it.  Other veterans seem to steer clear of such absolute judgments, even if they vehemently disagree with the choice I've made.  They know how close you tread to that line every day you're on duty.  I suspect a good number wonder if they shouldn't have made the same decision.  Combat veterans avoid such polarizing words because they should be left for those whose actions truly are extraordinarily unusual.  During the Iraq War, desertion rates in the US military have spiked to a record high since the days of the Vietnam War.  It seems throwing down the rifle and walking away in disgust isn't as unusual as it might appear.

Of course, the same logic holds for words you might not expect me to object to.  Words like "hero", for instance.  At least once, whenever I talk to a group of people about the path that led me here, someone utters the word "hero" as if it were a compliment.  I cringe every time I hear it.  Just as I'm no coward, I'm no hero, either.  Deciding to shed my uniform and walk away from the military wasn't a heroic act.  It was an enormously painful experience for me, and I agonized about it for - literally - months.  For those months, I continued to execute my orders and support my unit.  I continued to give orders that would result in the deaths of innocent civilians in numbers that still keep me awake at night.  The thought that truly hurts me is that, for all that time, I knew better.  I knew what I should do months before I actually did it.  And I was never even remotely concerned about it until it was staring me in the face.  Only through being present during the actual commission of war crimes was I able to realize what was wrong in my military service.  I still feel like I was forced into taking action, and really had no other choice than to refuse further service.  I simply couldn't live with myself anymore.  I can honestly tell you if there had been any other way to not participate in that anymore, I'd have taken it.  If there had been any easier way to stop it, I'd have done it.  I was no hero, I just ran out of options.

Who, then, in this vast web of political intrigue that war resisters seeking refuge in Canada has become, are the heroes?  Who are the truly unusual, who are spurred to action not because they have no other way out, but simply because they are aware of an injustice?  In my mind, it's the people that have put in nearly inhuman hours trying to help us win our bid to stay here.  Nobody forced you people to help, and it would have been easy for you (far easier than it would have been for me) to simply turn and walk the other direction, pretending you'd seen and heard nothing.  But you didn't.  When the government of Canada elected the route of political expediency over principle, you took our hands, called up your friends, and put the word out: "Let Them Stay."

I'm no hero.  You are.

Let's be honest about something

In my brief time on this planet, I've discovered a lot of what (I like to think) are basic truths about people and how they function.  I see a lot of parallels is the way people and other social animals behave, even as we often point to their behaviour (<--Canadian spelling creeping into my vocabulary) as a reason they are "worth less" than us.  One trait gets a lot of finger pointing, and I felt motivated to write on it a bit:  self-interest.

Everyone has heard the old adage, "the love of money is the root of all evil."  I happen to disagree with it, if only because I regard the love of money as one specific instance of a broader problem, which is love of self above all else.  Certainly, loving and looking out for yourself are natural enough traits and one could hardly expect natural selection to function without them.  But isn't being able to put someone else's interests ahead of your own the mark of a mind that can truly function in the abstract?  I'm not talking about simple biological family connections, either.  I'm talking about being able to extend the social group you provide this "them first" altruism for- extending it as far as you consciously want it to go.  I think that is one of the fundamental traits of an intelligent mind.  So why do we consistently fail at it?

I was able to watch the CPAC footage of the vote in Ottawa on the C440 bill to allow war resisters to apply for permanent residence in Canada.  It was very narrowly defeated, but watching the vote was very educational for me.  Several votes happened that night, and only one party on the floor behaved the same way every time.  Every vote, the Conservatives were like a machine.  If the rules of the House allowed it, I have no doubt they would rise and sit to cast their votes in perfect synch with the Prime Minister.  I hesitate to attribute this to pure altruistic behaviour, and the larger issue of the importance of obedience in the conservative mindset is something that deserves more than the passing mention I can afford in this post, but the result is the same.  There is certainly a measure of putting someone else first in their lock-step mentality.  I won't pretend to know the precise mix of obedience to the party and its leader versus an unselfish desire to truly do something for someone else at cost to self, but the result of that equation is a real and palpable thing when you watch voting take place on the floor of the House of Commons.  To lesser degrees, both the NDP and le Bloc Québécois seem to be able to muster a similar sentiment, being parties more or less united behind a common cause.

Then we look to the Liberal Party, and what begins to happen?  On the outside, we see lots of things and people we can point fingers at, such as Michael Ignatieff's last minute reversal in his support for war resisters at the C440 vote, or Maurizio Bevilacqua basically selling his MP seat to the Conservatives to get himself a mayoral posting. If you take each issue and strip it down to its nuts and bolts, the thing you find underneath is always the same: self interest.  I'm looking out for me and mine.  And we blame them, don't we?  We get angry, call them wishy-washy, and pretend the Liberal Party has no moral compass or backbone.  In fact, even if such a generalization could be fairly applied to every Liberal, it would ignore the truth- there is a moral compass there in the ones we take issue with, but it seems to point at "me and mine" for each of them, instead of "the right thing to do".  Why?  Because they are no different than we are.

Let me emphasize that last point:  They are no different than we are.  By "they", I mean "most Liberals", and by "we", I mean "most politically-active leftists".  Let me paint a picture for you.  If you happen to be active in social justice issues, this will be something you've seen all too much of.  Something Important is coming up.  The folks who attend every meeting for our little organization (whichever it might be) realize that they will need a mountain of support for Something Important, and so the call goes out across email and phone lists.  We get to our first meeting, and get excited to see all the extra faces ready to help out the cause.  Then, as the meeting progresses, someone interjects about how their input isn't being fairly considered in light of how they went out of their way to come to this stupid meeting.  We make it a little further, and someone else wants to derail the proceedings for a bit and wax poetic about how Unrelated Issue is actually at the center of Something Important, and should be given centre stage.  After a few events like this, a meeting can feel like it's devolving into chaos quickly.  But again, let's take a step back and look at the big picture.  Whether it's someone using a lot of unnecessary words to say "look at me," or someone saying "this is important to everyone because it's important to me," that treacherous word always sneaks in there:  me.  Let's give that a second to sink in.  If you're  an activist, compare the last public meeting you held about any given issue to the scenario above, and then imagine everyone is in their best business attire and has a vote to cast.  Are you starting to look like the Liberal caucus?  I think so.  We allow petty self-interest to fracture us, just as they allow it to fracture them.  The only difference is in scale.  They are no different than we are.

I hope you're not coming into this paragraph looking for some sort of sage advice on how to fix this.  I don't have it.  I worry that this is simply the curse that goes along with a political group that's made up principally of those that are willing to ask hard questions of authority figures, where the inclination to "go along to get along" is of intrinsically less value.  Maybe the best first step in dealing with self-interest is simply to realize how pervasive it is, and call it out when you see it- even if you see it in yourself.  Putting the group or another individual before yourself is hard work, especially when they aren't standing right in front of you.  It takes practice.  To be perfectly honest, this post started out about something far more specific, but related.  As I thought about it, I realized a broader message that I wanted to communicate first.  Something a little less about what bothers "me", and a little more about what I see as a problem for "us".

I know lots of people will read this and think to themselves, "that's not me."  I know, I know.  You're not the problem.  You don't act that way.  You always put the needs of the group ahead of yourself, and never let your ego or vanity get in the way of something important.  I'm not that easy to convince, though, and you shouldn't be, either.  Go out and prove it.  Today.

And then do it again tomorrow.