Antidote

To a lot of anti-war foolishness found here.

The pith of the Cindy Sheehan story is the mother-and-son moment that occurred when this anti-war mom saw her son join the military. That kind of decision is never comprehensible to some people. When some of my co-workers think of red states or military families, they start talking about "Deliverance."

My background is closer to that of my co-workers than it is to military families. Since World War II, we haven't been a military family. My father's stint in the army in the '50s was the last of it. But 20 years studying and writing about the American Civil War on a very intimate local level forced me to patiently open my mind to a way of life I never experienced.

If some of my co-workers really want to start to get a clue, this post about Luke Strickin's plaintive song is an open-door invitation:

After recovering from my initial shock, I began to wonder if Karl Rove had written that song. (You can listen to some of it here.) How could an actual Guardsman from Arksanas, just 23 years old, who suffered through twelve months in Iraq, feel that way about the war? Of course, I feel that way about the war. But it isn't my life on the line. I haven't had to test my ideology against the actual experience of democracy promotion.

I seriously did wonder if the song was some sort of hoax. But for what it's worth, the Associated Press did a story on Luke Stricklin, so I'm going to assume that he really is the real thing. It turns out that Stricklin first recorded the song in Iraq using a $25 guitar that an Iraqi boy found for him at a street market. With the help of laptop and microphone, he went to work. Once again, it's a story almost impossible to believe.

This is the definition of a noble cause. This is the answer to Cindy Sheehan's question. Luke Stricklin doesn't have a team of speechwriters or a degree in international relations. Nor does he describe America as threatened, like Trace Adkins does. He is simply proud of what he and his country have been able to do on behalf of others.

In contrast to Bush, Stricklin openly acknowledges that there are serious questions to be asked about why the United States invaded Iraq. But now our mission is clear. (See boldface above. Emphasis added.) Surely it is noble to defend one's homeland from foreign attack. But how much more noble is it to risk one's life in order to protect a nation of strangers from deprivation and terrorism?