I won't go! By Matthew Byers
I do not want to go to Iraq, but
Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wants to send me there.
Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hagel, a Vietnam
veteran, argued that the draft should be studied, asking, "Why shouldn't
we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?"
As the war in Iraq wears on, what was a year ago an inaudible murmur from
the far right has resounded in other political circles. And this terrifies
me.
I was 14 when George W. Bush first took office; I was a freshman in
high school when the tragedy of Sept. 11 so altered the political and emotional
landscape of our nation; and, as my 18th birthday will be in November,
I cannot vote in the next election. I will, however, be eligible for the
Selective Service that month, regardless of who wins the presidency. President
Bush will not institute a draft before then, but should his seat in the
Oval Office be secured, it is easily conceivable that he might ask me to
fight and perhaps die for my country. I do not know what courage I will
have when the time comes, but I do know that this is real; the lives of
this nation's young men, including my own, are at stake. This is real,
and those of us who are the most affected will not be the ones making the
final decision.
The decision will be made by people like Dick Cheney and Bush, men who,
when it was their turn to serve, used their wealth and political clout
to avoid Vietnam, letting those with fewer connections go instead. I do
not hold this against them, because everyone knows that war is hell. What
I hold against them, though, is that they refuse to admit it. The lessons
that we were supposed to have learned in Vietnam are coming back to revisit
us, and among those are that not all wars are good wars, that you cannot
ask someone to die for a mistake, and that even with the most powerful
military machine, victory is not guaranteed. In Vietnam, 58,000 American
soldiers bravely laid down their lives, and today South Vietnam is under
communist control. So far, more than 750 Americans have died in Iraq, and
the heaviest fighting has taken place in the past month. What end do we
face there?
It has become unclear what we are fighting for. There were no connections
to terrorism, and there were no weapons of mass destruction, and what remains
are hollow words such as "liberty" and "democracy." I do believe in these
ideals, and I love my country, but the Bush administration has ignored
those who are a legitimate threat and attacked Iraq for reasons unclear,
misleading the American people, even those risking their lives in the armed
services. We the people deserve an explanation for this mess, especially
if we are asked to clean it up.
I, for one, do not agree with this war, and I say to the president:
This is your war, not mine, and you should be the one fighting it.
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