A Confederate Yankee
By Bill Mayers
As I was a’walking up on Kilgarry Mountain,
I spied Colonel Farrell, and his money he was counting.
I first drew me pistol, then I rattled me sabre,
Saying “Stand and deliver, for I am the bold deceiver!”
(Town of Sullivan, NY – Feb. 2013
) Sunlight filtering through the trees on Marine Base Quantico dappled the ground as a group of civilian executives in full battle gear accompanied Marines up a hill toward their morning objective: meeting with a local village priest to establish a relationship.
That plan fell apart, however, when the group realized that the “solemn ceremony” they’d been invited to was a forced “wedding” in which a bride whose hands were bound with rope was carried screaming into a tent.
Now the stark choice: protect the woman from possible harm and alienate an important ally or allow the wedding to take place and avoid interfering in a culture they did not understand.
Talk about being torn.
This was part of a new effort by business schools to teach something lacking in standard curriculum: ethics. The military has to think “outside the box” in these trying times. So what to do? The failure to win an ally could lead to unbending hostility toward Americans and cost us both in economic terms and in lives lost to hostile attacks by offended villagers and their countrymen.
This story, found in the Jan. 29 issue of USA Today, should give you and me pause.
Or this one: at the U.S. Army base at Fort Dix, a platoon of young National Guardsmen were training prior to deployment to hostile sands in Afghanistan. Warned not to allow locals to mingle freely with them, they were suddenly approached by a female figure carrying a small bundle and crying, “My baby, my baby! Help me!”
Naturally, they watched as she approached, seemingly in genuine distress. Moments later, there was a distinct noise, and the woman pointed out several of the Guardsmen and said forcefully “You’re dead! You allowed me to get up close and detonate a bomb under this outfit I’m wearing!”
Lessons? These Americans – the business execs taking that seminar with the Marines and those Guardsmen training at Dix did what most of us would do – they tried to do the right thing.
But they didn’t feel good about it.
The business execs at Quantico realized they had to let the “wedding” proceed in order to meet the greater good. And the Guardsmen had to answer to Sgt. 1st Class Allison Myers – my eldest daughter, the drill sergeant who played the female suicide bomber. They had to learn that in real situations in the war zone, the proper response to that female who would not stop approaching despite warnings is to shoot: not to wound – to kill.
And what are you and I to make of this? It’s a lesson we’d much rather not have to absorb. It’s that you’re not always going to see things work out the way you’d like them to. The first paragraph above about the bold deceiver reminds us that firearms misuse is not a new thing.
And when we approach questions of such profound impact upon us all, there are neither simple approaches nor easy answers.
Another has suggested that the problem lies in today’s young folks having no values, no ethics, no sense of personal responsibility. Well, yes, but those very same accusations have been tossed out literally for thousands of years. Was it Socrates, or perhaps one of his contemporaries, who bemoaned the dissolution of the youth of his day?
So what has this approach done to help resolve the problem of extreme violence? Nothing. All the preaching has not changed people’s behavior in all this time, so why would we keep pushing those same ineffectual buttons and wondering why they still don’t work?
It’s like a guy continuing to bash his head bloody against a stone wall because it will feel so good once he stops.
But he never stops, only anticipates that someday, it will feel good to stop.
I’ll say it again: how we as a society deal with ever-escalating violence will be the defining issue of the age, and firearms control is an unavoidable topic within that greater issue. Whether or not greater gun control is needed is no longer in question. The task now is to determine, as reasonably as is humanly possible, how we go about it. And we all have the right – no, the obligation – to speak our minds AND to listen – really, really listen – to the other guy.
William D. “Bill” Mayers RT, RN, of Sullivan is a retired senior U.S. Army Corpsman. A certified healthcare professional since 1964, he holds two professional licenses, including that of Registered Professional Nurse licensed in New York, Alaska, Virginia and Louisiana. He has four children, two stepchildren, two grandchildren and is an avid analyst of current events.