A guilty spectator, at 22, to this war

IN TRANSITION #16

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 13, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

A few weeks ago I engaged in a cellphone argument in the middle of South Station. It was about American foreign policy. Sort of. My friend wanted a job in Iraq, and I thought she was crazy.

''I'm tired of spending all my time reading and writing about it, having never been," she said. ''It's the place to be in the world for what I want to study." She was right, I must admit, although I thought her career advancement in international security affairs was beside the point.

''Why don't you work in a place that's less likely to get you killed?" I asked. ''How about a formerly war-torn region of the world?"

The particulars of our argument were less important than the phone call that interrupted it --the phone call I didn't answer. Only after I hung up (or was hung up on, I can't remember which), did I receive that voice mail.

The message began with heavy breathing and then uncontrollable sobs. I heard something garbled about a group of men. It was all so incomprehensible between gulps of air and steady tears. I distinctly made out the words ''11 people." And then this eerie cry:

''You've got to do something, Ben. You've really got to do something."

I had been pacing back and forth through the lobby of South Station throughout the earlier phone call, probably drawing far too much attention to myself than one should ever draw in a busy transportation hub these days. I stopped abruptly while I listened to the voice mail. I watched the people milling about so bored, so aimless. I assumed the worst. An attack? Rape?

I dialed her number. She answered calmly.

''Hi," she said. ''Umm, sorry about that hysterical message."

In a strange collision of cellular airwaves, my friend's message concerned, yes, Iraq. Eleven men -- several of them younger than ourselves -- had been killed that day. Their photos had been plastered on the evening news, and my friend had lost it.

Back on the phone, we nervously tried to make light about her emotional outburst. How ridiculous! To get so worked up about a few pictures on TV. And it's not like we haven't seen pictures like that every few days in the paper!

Still stranger: How anesthetized we've become.

America observed Veterans Day this past Friday -- a holiday that had come and gone 22 times in my life without so much as a moment of silence. I've had no immediate family in the military -- save for a grandfather who once served in the Coast Guard. I have no friends in Iraq or Afghanistan. I only know one or two people, period, currently serving in any of the armed forces.

I have been a guilty spectator to this war -- too sidelined from the powers that be to have any say, too insulated from the war for it to have any direct impact on my life. Sure, I spoke out against the decision to invade. I marched, wrote editorials, participated in dorm room discussions late into the night.

But the question was never put to me directly. Would I go fight? In fact, nobody asked me to make any sacrifice. There was no draft, no recruitment at my school, no personal repercussions for a decision I didn't support. Like so many liberal Americans, I've watched the pictures come back with a sickened ''I told you so" anguish, and then continued to go about my business -- detached from the horror unfolding day after day in the Middle East.

Last week I browsed photos online of those who have died in Iraq. Their smiling faces, their youth and hope, so haunting. So many 22-year-olds, like myself. Some are just out of college, others left temporarily, and still others never had the opportunity. Instead of working through these strange post-diploma days, contemplating the prickly questions of what direction to set out into the world, how to transition into a 9-to-5 routine, etc., they fought and died in a war because their president told them to do so.

I suppose the least I could do is notice.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

This piece was also published in the other Globe zone sections in advance of Veteran's Day, so that it could be sent out over the New York Times wires.

According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, I'm a syndicated columnist.

And here's a link to the piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Apparently, I was published alongside Charles Krauthammer and Ellen Goodman. And here it is in the Winnipeg Free Press. And here in the Grand Forks Herald.