The Weight of the Last Option
"I heard the bullets whistle," wrote 22-year-old George Washington after his first exposure to war, "and believe me, there is something charming in the sound."
When King George II was informed of the remark, he observed tartly, "He would not say so had he heard many."
I was reminded of that exchange from 1754 during the recent Democratic primaries when both Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark stressed their military service as a qualification to be president. Kerry received the Silver Star for saving his patrol boat in South Vietnam by killing a Viet Cong soldier. Clark was also awarded a Silver Star for fighting on with his troops in South Vietnam despite serious wounds.
Is exposure to the rigors and misery of war a valuable asset for a candidate who seeks to become America's commander in chief? The question is likely to be with us until Nov. 2.
In Washington's case, by the time he was commanding troops during the Revolutionary War he had long outgrown any youthful enthusiasm for battle, and he was disdainful of civilians who criticized his strategy from behind the lines: "I can assure those gentlemen," Washington wrote to the Continental Congress with an asperity he seldom permitted himself, "that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets."
When Washington became president, his military experience continued to shape his actions. When he faced the prospect of entangling the United States in further wars, he risked his reputation by maintaining the nation's neutrality. Some members of the opposition never forgave him for refusing to back France in her war with England.
During the War of 1812, a naval hero named Isaac Hull tried to explain to a group of admiring civilians his reaction to combat: "I do not mind the day of battle," Hull said. "The excitement carries one through. But the day after is fearful. It is so dreadful to see my men wounded and suffering." Hull's president, James Madison, with scant military experience, had led the nation into that hapless war.
Sometimes a leader as humane as Abraham Lincoln will be drawn into war and must try to see it through to victory. But Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, a man who did the fighting, emerged from the Civil War to tell a class of military cadets: "It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation." Sherman concluded with a one-word definition unlikely to be bettered: "War is hell."
