In the past five decades of war and rumors of war, my Uncle Sam has generally been behind the scenes, if not directly on the scene. There have been interludes of more or less peaceful sobriety within the sprees of covert intervention or overt brawling. But living with Uncle feels more and more like living with a drunk. He spends his time whispering with the boys in shadowy bars where the general public is not allowed or not inclined to peek. We’re never quite sure what he’s been up to, and never quite sure we want to be. When he does come home at night, the booze on his breath can be overpowering, the blood on his hands alarming. Uncle gets defensive when we ask direct questions, though he doesn’t mind us asking when it’s too late to make any difference. So for the most part, we don’t ask. We pretend not to see. There isn’t a problem. War happens. Uncle means well. He’ll sober up eventually. Won’t he?

To say that I come from a country torn by war sounds absurd, because I’ve never experienced a bombing raid or seen soldiers fighting, or known any of what Williams called “the flashes and booms of war.” I have never shrunk from work or play because my homeland was poisoned with mines. I have never lived in a village plundered by tanks. Most other Americans haven’t either. Nevertheless, I believe we are a people reduced by war. Too much of our money and attention is dedicated to a defense which so much of the time has smelled offensive. Sowing the wind is the other half of reaping the whirlwind, after all. It too devastates a nation, harms its children, infects its economy.

Coming to consciousness around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, I assumed that the best prospect for survival was to cozy up to the one kid at school whose parents had a bomb shelter in their basement. I absorbed lurid descriptions of how a single Russian nuke on Detroit would toast my family in Ohio. (Thanks, Readers’ Digest.) I grew up wondering whether my brother would be drafted and whether Vietnam would last long enough for it to be my turn. Over nine years of that war we mourned the deaths of 60,000 of ours. The other side mourned two million of theirs, enduring the fiercest bombing campaign in the history of planet earth. When the bombs stopped no one seemed exactly sure who’d won. Even some in Uncle’s closest circle said things might have gone too far and too long, though they insisted we’d meant well. But a lot of Americans couldn’t help but wonder why the war had ever started in the first place.

For a while we thought Uncle might try to sober up, but he soon found proxy wars too intoxicating to let alone. When the Nicaraguans proposed a fresh government founded on such audacious ideals as social justice and economic parity, Uncle funded and trained a collection of freedom fighters called the Contra. The Contra fought freedom successfully enough that order was restored to Uncle’s tastes. Best of all, there were no American casualties to upset a public largely oblivious to Nicaraguan casualties, not to mention Nicaragua’s location.

Then one of Uncle’s dearest drinking buddies in the Middle East committed an indiscretion – a particularly callous indiscretion considering that Uncle had been buying most of the drinks. Not only had Uncle openly encouraged his friend’s bloody and tiresome war against a next door neighbor – he had graciously overlooked his friend’s bloody and tiresome war against his own people. When their brawl peaked, it lasted 100 hours. One hundred thousand of theirs died, several dozen of ours. Eyewitnesses called it a turkey shoot. The American public jumped for joy, though to more than a few the jumping seemed contrived and the joy artificial. But many were seduced by the convenience of a war you could watch on TV. At last, fast victory. And the media declared us delivered from that pesky condition it referred to as Vietnam Syndrome.

If a military venture proved less convenient, we compliantly ignored it. We heard relatively little about our 18 Marines killed in Somalia, and relatively less about the 500 Somalis (two thirds of them women and children). Death happens. The media could be counted on to let us know when we needed to take the trouble to care. September 11 forced us to take the trouble. Everyone came up for air with an agenda to push. Some called for restraint, some for revenge. Some cried Pure Evil, some crowed We Told You So. Some simply felt a desperate need to stop and reflect and wonder why, although such behavior was judged unbecoming and unpatriotic.

The president’s agenda was instantly apparent. “We’re at war,” he informed his aides a few hours after the terrorist attacks. “That’s what we’re paid for.” So we did Afghanistan (ancient history, been there, fixed that). And now, unless we can somehow get Uncle to Detox fast, we’ll do Iraq. And then who knows? Maybe fix Somalia. Again. Or Colombia. North Korea? Iran? Sowing the wind, finding it inconvenient to recall the other half of the equation. These days Uncle’s mighty desperate for another shot of Old Tigris. His hand is shaking so hard he can scarcely hold the glass to the bar. If we care about Uncle, we really ought to insist he get some help. Might he not yet come home, join the family again? Time was, he was a reputable guy who could hold his liquor. Our children ought to get a chance to know that.

John Liechty teaches in Muscat, Oman. E-mail: liechty98@hotmail.com

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