Considering two more of Michael Moore's very bad questions.

Bill O’ Reilly finally tracked down Michael Moore, who was (shock!) in Boston for the convention. Michael the Hut agreed to an interview so long as it was aired unedited, and so long as he and O’Reilly could take turns asking each other questions. What started out as a decent idea quickly fell into O’Reilly attempting to explain the difference between a blatant lie and being wrong (this was in relation to WMD), Moore saying there is simply no difference at all. The Hut’s overall point was, What have the nine hundred soldiers died for if there were no WMD in the first place? This was first voiced in exactly those words, later expanded to 1) “Would you sacrifice your child to remove a dictator?” and 2) “Would you sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah?”

Well, the first question is quite different from the second, isn’t it? Name the parents who have happily sent their child off to war, no matter how they may have believed in the cause. Certainly millions have beamed with pride as they have seen their children off to the military, which is called upon from time to time to undertake undesirable but necessary tasks, like stopping the spread of Communism in Indochina and removing dictators. Of course no parent wants to learn their child has been killed in combat (or by a car bomb), but these are people who have a far greater understanding of military life and warfare than people like Michael Moore are willing to give them credit for.

The Hut’s invoking other people’s children reminds one of a scene in his abortion of a film, where he approached various elected officials and asked them if they’d be willing, right then and there, to sign up their children for service in Iraq. Here he hopes for a conditioned response, namely for decent people (in front of him and the audience) to picture Little Timmy being mowed down by some of al Sadr’s boys and shout, “Oh, heavens no!” There his point is made: If Congressman A is unwilling to send his children to Iraq, why is he so willing (provided he is so willing) to stand idly by and allow the president send other people’s kids off to die? (Well, because they have no choice, that’s why.) O’Reilly finally managed to say that he would sacrifice himself, but stopped short of agreeing with the implied sentiment that underage, unregistered, uncommitted children should be shipped off to Iraq, even hypothetically, which is logical.

There are answers to Moore’s questions, and they are common sense things. First of all, something like nine hundred and ten American soldiers have died in Iraq since the march to Baghdad began sixteen months ago; that is a terrible number. In a perfect world, not one American (in or out of the military) would have died in the commission of those movements. But this isn’t a perfect world. For their general ineptitude and lack of preparedness, the Iraqi enemy was going to fight back to one degree or another, and other terrorists were going to hit our soldiers. There were stretches of time in Vietnam – we trust Senator Kerry could speak definitively on this – where more Americans were killed per day than have died in Iraq in sixteen months. An unfortunate perspective but a fair one to consider; for all the distress there, the enemy has been surprisingly ineffective at making substantive dents in the American force as compared to, say, the North Vietnamese.

Secondly, parents are not uniformly dragging their children into recruitment offices and demanding their enlistment, though it gives those prone to zealotry some comfort in believing that is the only way we come into active soldiers. The United States military remains the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, the important distinction between this version and the 1942 version being that it’s wholly voluntary, so even though there may be some outside sources plying those who decide to serve – lack of money for college is the typical reason – an implicit trade off is being made: You will give us years, we will give you college (or whatever). If called away to duty in the course of their commitment, they are called away, and that is that. This is the agreement our soldiers have made, and when called upon to hold up their end of the bargain, we can and should worry for their safety, but not complain about the free will of it all.