The world just got a lot scarier in the last few weeks — and that is saying a lot.
From the safety of our living rooms, we’ve watched as missiles fall from the sky, lethal drones fly into buildings, and naval ships are sunk by a submarine. Alas, this is not a movie — and may not (officially) be a war, either — but the kinetic energy being unleashed is not theoretical or hypothetical.
Every time a conflict like this one involving U.S. military action arises, “Just War Theory” comes up in Catholic conversations. Based on sound biblical exegesis, it definitely needs an application to our recent big-stick actions in Iran. But it also remains theoretical when you have a dog in the fight.
One of my brothers has two grandsons in the fight. One serves in the U.S. Navy and one serves in the U.S. Air Force, and both are in what is euphemistically called the “Theater of Operations.” My son, a naval engineer civilian worker for the U. S. Navy, has been to all the places making news several times. Now he is attached to a ship on the West Coast, which his mother and I are thankful for, but he could have easily been a third member of our extended family in a dangerous situation.
Our family, like so many American Catholic families, has had more than a few dogs in more than a few fights. I had uncles and cousins who fought in World War II and Korea. My oldest brother, Roger, was in the Air Force and, though never stationed overseas, proudly claimed that at no time during his deployment at the Air National Guard station at Van Nuys Airport did any divisions of the Red Chinese Army come over the Santa Monica Mountains. Another brother, Mike, joined the Marines out of high school and served in the relatively peaceful time of the late 1950s to early 1960s. He kept the commies out of Barstow.
Twin older brothers Rich and Ray also joined the Marines, but this time during the Vietnam War. Their names were placed on an honor roll at the back of our church, along with about 30 other names of young men from the parish who were in the military. The observation in the family was that this was the first time those two guys were ever going to be on an “honor” roll.
Richie lucked out and got no closer than the island of Okinawa. His twin, Ray, on the other hand, won an all-expenses-paid trip to Southeast Asia. The months he was “in country” were strange around the house. No one said the quiet part out loud. When a letter from Ray came, we would gather in the living room and our mom would read it out loud to us. It became a kind of ritual, and also, I think, therapy for our mom, who was living with the dread of receiving a different kind of letter. Ray came out of that war with no discernible physical scars, but the ones we could not see, and the ones we didn’t understand, he bore for a long time.
When I turned 18, I dutifully and ignorantly marched down to my local Selective Service office and told the person behind the desk that I was there to register for the draft. Not only had the actual draft been done away with, I was quickly told, but when I turned of age, it would no longer be necessary to even register for a possible future draft. I was too young for Vietnam, and too old for everything that followed.
The justification for any military action is always decided by one group, and the responsibility to carry out the decision is left to another. Whether one is a spear thrower at the Battle of Gaugamela with Alexander the Great, the third trumpet at Jericho with Joshua, or manning a Browning .30 machine gun with General ‘Black Jack’ Pershing in the Ardennes Forest, the common soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine bears the brunt of the actions and wills of those in charge.
War may have become hyper-mechanized with unmanned drones and missiles, but there are people in the buildings they strike, and innocents in bomb shelters where those powerful ballistic projectiles penetrate. But for most of us, we just do not think about people at the pointy end of a Blue Sparrow Missile system. But someone does.
Just like my family is thinking about the two young men that mean so much to their families back home, in reality, everyone has a dog in the fight.
