(Host) Commentator Philip Baruth talks about the Pentagon’s increasing over-use of the Army National Guard and Reserve.
(Barruth) Sometimes you have to go looking for ironies, and sometimes ironies are just suddenly there, right in front of you, daring you to disbelieve them. For some reason, this last sort of irony always finds me late at night or very early in the morning, when I’m half-asleep.
Case in point: about two weeks ago, I was sitting in the cafe at Barnes and Noble, and I was reading the New York Times. I had some really strong coffee and a plain bagel with butter and grape jelly. I’d just dropped my daughter off at daycare, and I had an hour before I had to be at work, so life was pretty good. In the New York Times, on the front page, was an article about the Pentagon’s increasing reliance on the Army National Guard and Reserve. It detailed the way that the standard committment asked of the Guard and Reserve two weekends a month, two weeks a year has suddenly morphed for thousands into a year in Iraq, possibly 18 months in the live-fire zone of Iraq. There were already 20,000 Reservists supporting regular troops in Iraq, and the war planners were preparing to call up several more divisions worth. The weekend soldiers would receive three months training before shipping out. More than a few of these weekend soldiers were dying from remote-control bombs in soda cans and rocket-propelled grenades.
When I’d finished the paper, I sat there for a few minutes finishing my coffee. At a certain point, I realized that about three tables away from me was a middle-aged man talking to two young men, about 18 or 19. The man was in a blue dress uniform, and between him and the young men sat a folder, which, when I got really nosy and leaned over to look at, I could see was a folder full of papers. On the cover of the folder was the insignia of the National Guard and Reserve. Again, it was early in the morning, and it took a few seconds, but I realized that I was looking at a recruiter with two prospects. I looked back down at the New York Times, looked back up at this recruitment meeting, and yes, it was true, it was really happening. Both of the boys were wearing t-shirts and jeans; one had an earring. The boys looked happy, eager, involved. The recruiter looked happy, eager, involved.
Now, nobody in the world respects the Reserve and National Guard more than I; they’re meant to be the kind of truly defensive fighting force that I think typifies power used wisely. But times have changed. So I did what I knew would ruin my morning, and theirs. I walked over to the table and I tapped the kid with the earring on the shoulder and I handed him the front page of the New York Times. The three of them gave these startled looks. I tapped the article on the front page and I said, “Don’t leave the building without reading this article,” and the kid just gave me a quick nod, like the situation had gotten a little too socially complicated, and he wanted to react as little as possible. The recruiter, understandably, looked annoyed.
I walked out of the cafe with my stomach in a knot, because the peaceful coffee-bagel-paper morning was ruined, and the future had been sliced in two. In one future, the kid with the earring was patrolling the streets of Fallujah, and in the other he wasn’t. One of them was better than the other, but what human being could say which.
Philip Baruth is a novelist who lives in Burlington and teaches at the University of Vermont.