Eleven

M. Peevie here. I'll be eleven in two days, and it's time for an update.

So. Last week we were driving to school, and there was a Mercedes in front of us. The only reason I know it was a Mercedes was that my mom said, Hey, I like that Mercedes in front of us. Then A. Peevie said, well, it's not that cool because it's boxy like a mini-van. But I pointed out that the Mercedes was not totally boxy: "It has hips!" I said, noticing that it sort of curved out below the windows.

My mom, the writer, liked this observation. "M. Peevie," she said, "Nice use of anthropomorphism."

"Well, I don't know what 'anthropo-whatever' is," I said, "but I thought it was personification." Then we totally got into a conversation about the difference between personification and anthropomorphism, and IRONICALLY my mom could not even tell us the difference. Sigh. What good are parents if they can't even define their terms?

In school I asked my teacher, Mrs.Kind if she knew the difference between personification and anthropomorphism. She did not. She told me to go down the hall to Mr. Language Man's room and ask him. Mr. Language Man said something that I do not remember. Later when I told my mom about it, she said she thinks they are basically the same. I'm going with that for now.

In other news, for my birthday I want World Peace. I want world peace because I do not like to think about our soldiers and people in other countries getting hurt and killed, and I do not even understand why they can't just sit down and work it out. This is what my mom tells me and my brother A. Peevie all the time. "Sit down and work it out," she says, "I am tired of being a referee." 

And usually we do work it out, but sometimes A. Peevie is completely unreasonable, or my other brother C. Peevie is mean, and I have to tell my mom that he is hurting my feelings. Even though he is the big brother, sometimes he is immature, and sometimes he is a bully. Sometimes he is fun, though, and he wrestles with me. This usually happens late at night, like 9 or 10 o'clock, in my parents' bedroom, and they get extremely annoyed at us for being loud and obnoxious and for being in their bedroom when they are ready to Be Done With Kids.

I have a couple of goals now that I am getting older. One goal I have is to understand what I hear at church. Some days this is easier than other days. Some days the pastor talks about stuff I don't really want to hear about, like S-E-X. (Today my pastor said that we should not be more prudish about s-e-x than God is!--but I'm not sure what he meant. All I know is, I do not want to talk about it or think about it.) 

Another goal I have is to go to DePaul University on a softball scholarship. Because my dad works there I can go there and have free tuition, but I would still have to pay for roomanbord. I'm not really sure what roomandbord is, but if I go there on a softball scholarship, I would get that for free, too. I am working on my softball skills, and I think I am getting better. Sometimes we play traveling teams, though, and their pitchers scare me.

There is one thing I really really want for my birthday. It is a little cooler from Pottery Barn Teen that sits on your desk and hold like four cans of Coke. I think if I get this for my birthday, my happiness will be complete.

Talk to you next year, Internet. Peace out.

M. Peevie

Book Review: Joker One

Joker One by Donovan Campbell is a love story, a war story, a leadership guide, and a Marine recruitment narrative. It's a military memoir, and a little bit of a faith memoir. Joker One is an amazing true story, brilliantly told. I have never before read any memoir like it, and I urge you, when it comes out on March 10, to pick up a copy, read it, and pass it along.

I received my copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer (ER) program. In the past, I have had mixed luck with the ER selections I have snagged. This book made up for the duds.

Donovan Campbell completed the ten-week Marine Corp Officer Candidate School ("ten weeks of uninterrupted screaming") as a college junior, after which he swore that he would "never, ever join the Marine Corp." He graduated from Princeton and promptly joined the Corps, looking for "a pursuit that would force me to assume responsibility for something greater than myself, something that would force me to give back, to serve others." This earnestness struck me as a little too heavily played--but not for long.

Campbell's compelling story begins in the middle of a firefight, just after a rocket attack on an abandoned hotel that Campbell and his men were using as an observation position. Surrounded by rubble, choking dust, and pieces of exploded rockets, with a friendly machine gun firing full-bore a few feet away, Lieutenant Campbell calls in his position, burns his fingers on the still-searing-hot hockey puck of a warhead, and eventually discovered that the enemy had failed to kill or wound a single Marine.

That's just the first six pages.

Campbell's memoir covers the seven months that he spent with his company in Ramadi, Iraq, plus the four months of pre-deployment training at Camp Pendleton, California. He introduces fifteen men, the main characters in his deployment drama; and over the next 300 pages we learn to love and admire most of them as much as Campbell himself does.

Yes, most of them. Campbell uses real names in most cases, but two characters remain anonymous: Ox, the arrogant executive officer, with an astounding lack of self-awareness; and the inexperienced platoon sergeant who, "in theory...should be a lieutenant's right-hand man." Early on, Campbell described a field exercise which "highlighted the Ox's greatest strength--his unthinking, unhesitating aggressiveness--and his greatest weakness--his unthinking, unhesitating aggressiveness."

Campbell writes like a philosophical memoirist. As he tells the story of the baby-faced, inexperienced soldiers heading into what would turn out to be fierce and unrelenting guerilla-type combat, he takes time to examine the challenges of platoon leadership and his own evolution from a green, book-educated lieutenant with "zero real-world infantry experience" to a battle-experienced leader who had earned the love and respect of his men.

Before the Marines even boarded the plane for Iraq, Campbell describes a discipline dilemma which highlighted "the tension between justice and mercy, and, to some extent, between respect and love." As the officer responsible for a Marine facing discipline for the charge of under-age drinking, Campbell understood the need for consistency and accountability in the situation; but he also believed that

there are moments when simply following the letter of the law is a cop-out, and ultimately hinders your efforts to pull the best out of your men. ...the latter requires a love founded on humility, self-sacrifice, and in some cases, mercy.

Campbell wages an internal philosophical debate, asking himself, "What, then, should a young officer do to navigate the delicate tension between justice and fear, between mercy and love?" (Just the fact that Campbell even asked this question made me shake my head in wonderment. This to me displays a rare level of self-awareness, decency, and humility to which all of us should aspire.)

"The way to satisfy both justice and mercy," Campbell concluded,

is, quite simply, to take the hit for your men, to divert whatever punishment they may rate onto your own head if you believe that mercy is warranted...If you wear the bars on your shoulders, then it is your job to practice the greater love principle.

The "greater love" principle, if you're not familiar with it, is a reference to Jesus' words in the gospel of John: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It's not the only time Campbell references a Biblical principal, and in fact, his narrative describes a faith journey almost as much as a military journey. "Deep in my heart," Campbell writes,

I believed that prayer would work without fail, that if together Joker One prayed long and hard enough, God would spare all of us...What I know now, and which didn't occur to me then, was that by praying as I prayed, and hoping what I hoped, and believeing what I believed, I was effectively reducing God to a result-dispensing genie who, if just fed the proper incantations, would give the sincere petitioner (me) the exact outcome desired.

There's plenty of shooting, swearing, exploding, bleeding, and sweating in Joker One--but it contains far more sensitivity, humility, and tenderness than you would expect in a book about soldiers and war. It's kind of a military memoir for girls, really--except that in the best of all possible worlds, these characteristics would be honored and admired in men as much as in women. This book must feel like a gift to the men of Joker One and to their families. It felt like a gift to me--and I'm grateful to Lieutenant Campbell for his service to our country, both as a soldier and as a rememberer.

The Politician and the Pulpit

My friend Q just forwarded to me the video of Sarah Palin speaking at a church-related graduation ceremony at her church. I watched the whole thing.

First I want to say something in Palin's defense, because I do occasionally like to appear fair-minded. Some have misconstrued Governor Palin's words when she asked the congregation to pray for the military and for the situation in Iraq. She said this:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan. Bless them with your prayers, your prayers of protection over our soldiers.

It's all over the Internet that Palin said that the Iraq war is a mission from God--but that's not what she said. She was urging the congregation to pray that they are being sent "on a task that is from God"--in other words, that the choice to wage war in Iraq is one that pleases God.

This commission sounds good on the surface, at least to the evangelical mind. We are supposed to pray and be concerned that our choices please God, and that they fall in line with God's plan. But if you look a little closer, it's actually quite confusing and illogical. I'm convinced that Palin is NOT saying that the war IS a task from God. Perhaps Palin is suggesting that she hopes God will get on board with our plan to wage war, and make it his plan.

No wait; that can't be right. It's not humble enough.

What about this interpretation: Maybe Palin is saying we've made this choice to go to war, and we continue to make it every day, and our prayer should be that this choice falls in line with what God wants.

But what if it doesn't? Isn't the flip side of that prayer that if the war is NOT in line with what God wants, that we should ask God to do his God-thing and influence our leaders to get us OUT of Iraq? What if God is up there grieving and pissed off because we continue to choose to wage a war that is not just?

But this logical correlate to Palin's prayer does not show up in her spiritual exhortation, nor in her speeches. She appears to be convinced that the war is indeed a task from God, in line with his purposes. And if that is the case, then isn't it disingenuous to pray that the war fall in line with God's holy plan? Because essentially she's saying, "And tough luck if it doesn't." And that is not very Jesusy.

But my biggest problem with the video is that her church has given her a political platform to promote her own political career and agenda--and that is NOT what the church is supposed to be doing. Palin said,

What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys, as you go out throughout Alaska. I can do my part in doing things like working really really hard to get a natural gas pipeline, about a $30 billion dollar project that going to create a lot of jobs for Alaskans, and we're going to have a lot of energy flowing through here. And pray about that also. I think God's will has to be done, in unifying people and companies to get that gasline built; so pray for that.

But I can do my job there in developing our natural resources, and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our trooper have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded, but really all that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God. And that's going to be your job. As I'm doing my job let's strike this deal: Your job is gonna be to be out there, reaching the people, hurting people throughout Alaska. And we can work together to make sure God's will be done here.

Don't even try to tell me that that is not a political stump speech. She is speaking their language, the language of God-minded evangelicals. She even spiritualizes things that are way outside the purview of our ability to know God's will--like the natural gas pipeline, for example.

The church is not the place for politics; it is not the place for a leader to endorse one political party, candidate, or position. I'm not saying that there should be a dichotomy between our faith and the rest of our lives. I do believe that every aspect of our lives should be informed and influenced by our faith; but what that looks like, outside of the realm of specific Biblical mandates, is up to the individual believer.

The church should not provide a stump for a politician to use to bolster her own cause and her own agenda. That particular church has a history of promoting partisan politics, and in this case, Governor Palin made the politically advantageous but ethically ambiguous choice to use the church to advance her politics.

The whole video made me uncomfortable, not because I don't agree with Palin's politics, but because of the inappropriate marriage of the politician and the pulpit. How much more admirable would it have been if she had left her politics outside, and used the opportunity to congratulate the graduates and remind them to love God first, and let the politics fall as they may.

4,000 U.S. Soldiers Dead. Does Anybody Care?

War in Iraq: Death toll for U.S. soldiers reaches 4,000. Why don't we seem to care very much?

I'm just saying. Maybe 4,000 isn't enough for us to get enraged about. Maybe 4,000 U.S. soldiers, compared to 58,000 American casualties during the 15-year Vietnam debacle, is just not enough death to get our attention.

And what about the nearly 1.2 million--MILLION--Iraqi deaths since the U.S. invasion? What do they count for?

When the U.S. first invaded Iraq, I was convinced that it was a reasonable idea because I believed that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was real and that it would be a good idea to find them and remove them from within reach of Sadaam Hussein's trigger finger.

Now I feel, like many Americans, like I was, best case, misled, or worst case, lied to.

Meanwhile, the body bags keep piling up.

Do you know anyone who died in Iraq? Do you know a family who lost someone in Iraq? A friend of a friend, even?

This is why we can be so unexcited about this war, and why we can be ambivalent about whether we get our red, white and blue rear ends out of Iraq sooner rather than later. The war is distant, geographically and personally. We don't see battles and body bags on the nightly news; we aren't going to funerals for people we knew and loved.

Four thousand dead just isn't enough to get our attention.

But it should be.