I was born in 1951, six short years but a lifetime and then some after the end of the Second World War. As a child, the war seemed very distant to me yet shaped in rather dramatic fashion so much of my life in those early years. It is something of a curiosity to me that war was powerfully romanticized throughout the ‘50s and on into the early ‘60s. All of my friends at that time had parents who had been powerfully touched by the war and the suffering it brought yet we (my friends and I) played “war” nearly every day on the sprawling lawn of the Church at the corner of Maple and Elm. Our heroes were John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, and, of course, Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape.” TV nights included “Combat!” and “12 O’Clock High.” “Victory at Sea,” one of Donald Trump’s favorites, seemed always to be playing on some channel. The perception these gritty but, ultimately, fanciful views of war engendered shaped our notions of what glory, dying in battle, bravery, heroics, and being on the ‘righteous’ side looked like. I shared the story in another post about how my neighbor Ray’s father had his army helmet grazed by a bullet during the war. The heavy steel helmet was always passed between us when we gathered at Ray’s house. Each of us rubbed our fingers over the crease in the helmet, marveling at how brave and lucky Ray’s father was to have survived such a close call.
As we grew older, this admiration for the glories of war took on a new dimension as we discovered fireworks and the absolute joy achieved by blowing stuff up. All of us built models at this time. Predictably, many of these were battleships. Planting a firecracker in one of these ships, lighting the fuse and diving for cover as if you’d just tossed a grenade left pieces of the model battleship strewn all about the back alley. Laughter and whoops of joy signaled how profoundly satisfying it was to participate in a child’s world of war.
My views on war underwent a striking change as the Vietnam War began to dominate the news with talks of body counts and the threat of being drafted came into focus. Several friends surprised us all when they cast their fate to the wind and joined the Marines. I was still in college and protected by a deferment but that would change with the introduction of the Lottery system. If my number was relatively low, I could be drafted upon graduation. The protests had largely been satisfying because they united many of us around a shared cause, not because we had any real appreciation for the war beyond what we saw on the news. In truth, the news presented a different view of war than most of us grew up with that introduced an escalating understanding that there was little glory and nothing romantic about slogging through rice paddies anticipating a sniper’s bullet ripping through your flesh. War was more than scary, and thoughts of glory dissipated quickly.
This has been on my mind over the past week or so as I have watched and listened to Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio talk about and attempt to explain why we continue to casually flirt with war in Greenland, Cuba, Venezuela, and now, Iran. When I listen to Trump wax nostalgic about his love for “Victory at Sea,” watch Pete Hegseth’s hyperexcitement generated by blowing up speedboats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and how all three carelessly command Carrier battle groups into harm’s way from one hot spot to the next, I cannot resist the parallels between my childhood war games and their actions. I don’t think it’s unusual for a child to have naïve notions of war. But I do think it is reasonable to expect a child to develop a mature and realistic understanding of the realities of war as they grow into adults. Pete Hegseth’s caricatured effort to channel General Patton would be laughable if he were not Secretary of Defense…eh…War. His over-the-top macho brand of leadership that recklessly throws around the word “kill” displays a child’s moral world where only good and evil exist without anything in between. Donald Trump’s concluding remarks when the US first “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear stockpiles ended with this: “And I want to thank everybody. And, in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God Bless America.” It is remarkable how much this sounds like how a parent teaches their child to offer their first prayer. “I love you God. And God bless Mommy and Daddy…” In between Trump and Hegseth is Marco Rubio who does not seem to have embraced the childish recklessness of Trump and Hegseth but is a captive of his own fierce ambition which veils his capacity to see his own inconsistencies. “We hit Iran because Israel was going to… and then they’d hit us so we had to hit Iran.” “And listen!” he warns the press, “report what I’m saying accurately…” On second thought maybe he is the third member of the blessed child-like trinity. Rubio sounds like a kid just caught in a lie who cannot see the foolishness of trying to blame it on “your lying eyes.”
It is time for the adults to take charge and send the children home. Enough playing war. Enough of the idiotic tough talk. Enough of the magical thinking. Enough blaming everyone else but yourself. It’s time to go home little boys and sit in your room to think about your behavior and complete disregard for those who you are hurting.
I have a good Bible verse from that well-known passage in I Corinthians for these boys who love God to consider:
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
Grow up boys!
Something to Say 