With his college degree, Kit could have qualified for officer training school. But he would have none of that. He enlisted as a private and specifically requested that they send him to Iraq. While I can hardly think of a more admirable course of action, Vanessa was not pleased. She's been forced to confront an amazing reality: the love of her life might die.
Last March, I spent a weekend at La Giraudiere, my friend's chateau in the French Loire valley. One day, as I sat watching news from Iraq, an old man came into the kitchen and sat down, his bones cracking in the process. He looked at the television and shook his head, "C'est triste la guerre." (It's sad, war.)
The man was Louis, the 76-year-old gardener of the chateau grounds. Louis was a man of the land. Both his father and his grandfather had maintained the hedges and gardens of La Giraudiere. People came and went, but the land stayed the same, and Louis was there to tend it.
Any such observer is bound to have stories, and Louis had plenty, but on this particular day, his mood was more somber than usual. He recounted the warm June day when his life was changed. Early one morning, a caravan of German vehicles had come up the road. The victorious, advancing German army chose the chateau as its headquarters. Louis explained that the German commander had spread his map out on the very table my coffee was sitting on, and that he had sat in the exact same chair I was resting in. About 63 years before, the chateau had been stirred when the winds of war swept through.
Louis took me into the nearby village of St. George, where in the tiny church, there is a monument listing the many men of the parish who died in the Great War. As Louis put his hand upon the marble, his eyes closed, he murmured to me that St. George is a very small town. The loss was great, and after the war there were very few men left. After a brief prayer, we departed the church and returned in silence, honoring the dead with the silent treading of our feet.
The Parisian family I stayed with while I was studying abroad had its own stories. The eyes of my French father lit up when he recounted his early childhood memory of the advancing American tanks that had swept through his town, and of how the young children would run out into the streets to gather the candy American soldiers would throw into the crowd as they drove by. But the image of victory was clouded by memories of deprivation, challenges that continued for many years after the war was won.
War seems to have dug a big hole into the collective French psyche. Speaking with many people, it was easy for me to convince the French that the war in Iraq was justified and that the United States was doing the right thing. It seemed as if most French understood this. They wanted Saddam deposed too. But they couldn't overcome the horrific images that had been instilled into their heads as children. The recurrent theme: "You Americans have never been invaded. You don't know what it's like."
The French seem to understand war through personal loss. When you look at each individual death, you can't see war any other way. Watching the weekly Jim Lehrer Newshour report of deaths in Iraq helps me understand this. In silence they show the pictures of the dead and list any surviving relatives. Recently the list included a 37-year-old reservist survived by a wife and three children. It doesn't take much imagination to realize that the lives of these three children have been changed forever. When we consider the myriad joys that should have been ahead for that young father, the loss is magnified. It's this kind of loss that rips the fabric of our society apart.
America is truly at an impasse these days. In Iraq, the loss seems even worse: with major hostilities over, the actions of the insurgents only cause pain; they won't change the course of history. And so we as a nation are left with pain from our losses and anxiety for our youth, men like Kit with bright lives ahead of them who may soon see the sun set on their futures.
In Iraq we face a difficult situation. We are saving thousands of lives by removing Saddam. And the prospect of a democratic future for Iraq is one of the most optimistic goals our nation has ever endeavored to achieve. I was in favor of the war, and I remain in favor of it today. But why must the right thing be so hard and cost us so much?
Human nature forces us to make these tough choices, and often we are not completely pleased with either outcome. As long as we refuse to recognize our common humanity, tyrants like Hitler and Saddam will terrorize innocents, and nations like the United States will pay bitter prices to remove them. The winds of war will continue to sweep over the lands of La Giraudiere.
And in the garden, there will be Louis, sorrowfully observing it all. Voltaire's Candide searches for the answer to suffering, but ultimately he retires to cultivate his garden. I like to imagine Louis as a modern day Candide. He has seen his share of suffering, and with the wisdom of age, he shakes his head at the passions that continue to incite the young. But Louis can't change the world, only reflect upon it. And so, hoping for a better day, he continues to tend his garden.