A Gate at the Celestial Stairs, With Armed Sentinels

I just finished reading local author Lorrie Moore's newest novel, A Gate at the Stairs. It's an uneven novel that sometimes feels like a house that's had a few too many owners, a few too many additions, some of them well-made, others less so, even a few spaces that make you cringe some to enter. Happily, though, Gate.. finishes well, and you close the book with a feeling of satisfaction, tinged slightly with regret, as good books have a tendency to leave us. You also close the covers with a feeling of sadness, for it is not a joyful story and the culminating event of the narrative, the death of the narrator's teenaged brother in Afghanistan, is too close to our own moment to give us any scant comfort of distance. As I finished reading it, as the heroine was climbing into the coffin that held her younger brother's blown-apart remains, newspapers and blogs were full of the ongoing and reinvigorated debate over our military presence in that besieged nation.

Feelings on this run higher than usual in my family this round, as a very dear and special person who has been a part of our family circle just enlisted in the U.S. Army's Special Forces. The wind is knocked out of me by this; my heart feels bruised and tender. No one in my family has enlisted in any branch of any military since my father's stint as a Lieutenant in the Navy during WWII. My family in succeeding generations has changed. Most of us are no longer the kind of people who follow leaders very well. We're made up now of Democrats and Quakers and Unitarians, Jews and liberal Christians; our idea of military service is attending antiwar protests and prayer vigils, and we don't even do those very well. And now someone we know and love has voluntarily enlisted in a unit that is not only military but aggressively so, charged with often covert violent actions intended to protect US citizens, a secretive and undercover military organization which has as its very basis strict obediance regardless of violence, motive or intention.

It has stirred deep emotions, some of them rising in the middle of the night to stand like sabered sentinels at the gateway to sleep, forbidding entrance. It has made me wonder why he would do this, what attracted this bright and talented young man to years of unbreakable service in far away places doing untellable deeds at someone else's command? He is not a young man who needed to see the world; he is extremely well-read, well-travelled and even well-mannered. He is not a young man who needs income nor education nor career. He has everything our country, a loving and affluent family, and good genes can offer.

The Special Forces are what we used to call the Green Berets. I looked it up, and this is part of what Wikipedia offers: "The United States Army Special Forces, also known as Green Berets, is a Special Operations Force (SOF) of the United States Army tasked with five primary missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, and counter-terrorism....Currently, Special Forces units are deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They are also deployed with other SOCOM elements as one of the primary American military forces in the ongoing War in Afghanistan. As a special operations unit, Special Forces are not necessarily under the command authority of the ground commanders in those countries. Instead, while in theater, SF operators may report directly to United States Central Command, USSOCOM, or other command authorities."

This is not an issue I will resolve in one blog posting. There is no single pill I can toss down my throat to feel better. I have been asking so many questions, among them biggees like, "Do I want to feel that I, as an American citizen, am protected?" "Do I think we should have a standing army, let alone Special Forces?" You see, of course if I want "someone" to enlist, then I have to be able to accept that someone I love may enlist, but I'm not really so sure I want anyone to enlist. I'm not so sure about sending soldiers anywhere. I don't really understand why we don't just send teachers or food or power generators or running shoes or more flu shots. I'm not so sure the "Girl Effect" isn't more important than spreading democracy or enforcing democracy. I'm not even sure it isn't contradictory to think about "enforcing democracy." I'm not so sure we, with Joe Wilson's behavior so prominent, should even be touting democracy this week.

There will be more on this. There are enough people blogging about Joe Wilson and racism and the Obama administration right now. Me, I am left with the lines from the first 45RPM single record my older sister bought: Sgt Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets. "Fighting soldiers, from the sky. Fearless men, who jump and die... He'll be a man, they'll test one day: Have him win the Green Beret."

And I'm also left with the question of whether we should be sending more troops to Afghanistan.