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FRYMER |
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Foreign Legion  |
Our military adventures
opening a new era?
of TheColumnists.com
I never really understood the French Foreign Legion. Why were the French conducting military adventures abroad? How come the French people appeared not to be interested in this private war at all?
Now it seems we have the American Foreign Legion. Our troops, of course, are not international mercenaries. They are mostly young men from various National Guard units, or called up from the Reserves from which they had never expected to go to war.
But the Iraq war really is private. The American people, for the most part, pay little attention. Newspapers have stopped running stories about the deaths of our soldiers, or else it is an item in a roundup somewhere in the middle of the paper.
The president, when not confronted by a Cindy Sheehan, seems more concerned with bicycle rides or fishing trips and every once in a while he has to utter some statement like: “I really do think about the war every day.” Imagine that! Every day.
Nobody really knows now how we are going to end this thing. Our government had no idea that the Arabs could muster such a maniacal response. How long can they keep blowing themselves up? This thing should have been over when Bush said: “Mission accomplished.”
But it drags on, a few car bombs a day, a few Americans dead, the hiring of “independent contractors” to make up for the low enlistment rate on our side. I can’t imagine too many Americans joining up when you can make a couple hundred thousand as an independent contractor.
So the American Foreign Legion is born. Like the French version, it may go on for year after year without too much notice. It is not exactly affecting Americans bigtime like, say, the price of gasoline. It is not what you talk about at the water cooler in the office like, oh say, the incredible rise in real estate prices.
If you have a son or daughter over there, you pray and count the days. If you are over there yourself you--well, what do you do? The stories don’t make the newspapers. Reporters are too afraid to leave the compound to get out there and look around. It’s a bad scene.
Hell, I was once in the Reserves and I used to grouse about the monthly meeting I was required to attend. There would be some military talk but I never paid attention. Why was I so unlucky that I had to attend meetings when so many of my friends had managed to skip the whole thing.
Well, what do you know? I wasn’t unlucky after all. I was incredibly lucky that we didn’t have an American Foreign Legion back then. I could barely fire my M-1 rifle. What would I have done in a place like Falujah?
Well, yes, I lucked out. A lot of American boys (and girls) haven’t. And 1,830 of them are dead and there are those alive with limbs missing and others with lifetime nightmares.
I’m getting ready for my next vacation, just like George Bush.
©2005 by Murry Frymer. The Murry Frymer caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Aug. 29, 2005.
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