Jepson: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be...

Sometime during the spring of 1966 my family and my father’s best friend’s family were on a picnic in Stone Park, just outside my hometown of Sioux City, Iowa. The war in Vietnam was raging, and the topic was always on people’s minds. The two fathers got into it over whether or not they would recommend that their sons volunteer to fight in that war.

My father’s position was that under no circumstances would he recommend that my brother or I “serve” in Vietnam. He reasoned that Vietnam was an unjustifiable war that America had no business waging and that his sons would be fools to enlist.

My father’s friend offered the “My country right or wrong” cliché, popular at the time and that his four boys should serve. They went at it, hot and heavy, the remainder of the picnic. Their friendship was never quite the same after this heated exchange. It too became a casualty of Vietnam.

I was recently listening to a TV interview with a woman who was discussing the economy and the “quality” of her life, all the while straightening up her garage with her young daughter. Abruptly the conversation shifted to her son enlisting in the Army. Eyes welling, her voice cracked as she said she was unsuccessful in dissuading her son from enlisting, that she had had a prolonged yearlong conversation with him during his last year in high school. He would enlist against her misgivings.

What should a parent, in this case a mother, do to protect her child? I am immensely grateful for the sanity of my father regarding Vietnam. There was no family expectation that I go to Vietnam, actually just the opposite — that I lucidly avoid the potential death, disfigurement and violence of that ill-conceived tragedy. Survive. Thrive.

Here are the latest figures regarding military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a recent AP report, 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans of those wars are filing for disability benefits for injuries that are service related. That is, nearly one out of every two returning war veterans are requesting injury compensation.

As a mother, what do you say to a child for them to grasp the idea that warfare is not a lark, that “To be all that you can be” means that, today, there is nearly a 50 percent chance that you will, my son, come back “less” than what you were — physically, mentally or emotionally.

At this point, the conversation quite reasonably shifts to the legitimacy of the state’s argument for war (and any claims for our children to fight them). Arguably, America had one justifiable war the entire 20th century, that being World War II. We wrongly, immorally invaded Iraq, and why occupy Afghanistan when it was Osama Bin Laden who needed to be taken out?

Democrats and Republicans alike are militaristic fools and jingoistic blowhards. Our military is tragically and repeatedly used for fool’s errands and rather than strengthening — making the nation more secure — we are more fearful, more of a garrison state than we’ve been since the American Civil War.

The trajectory of the West (since Ancient Greece) has been a focus on the individual and his/her ability to reason. The state tells you it needs your child as cannon fodder. Think. What do you logically, reasonably conclude regarding that request? Act.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be …