Son of Liberty

Anne Morse wrote in National Review Online Twenty-four-year-old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, when his unit was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire in a firefight outside Baghdad. By now, the whole world knows that Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, did not want him in Iraq and did not support his decision to serve in the military. But Casey, a devout Roman Catholic, believed that he could do no other: He believed that God had called him to military service. "It's all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life," his sister, Carly Sheehan, told the Associated Press shortly after his death. "He was a Boy Scout from age six or seven and [an] Eagle Scout. It was kind of a natural progression to go into the military from that. He said he was enjoying the military because it was just like the Boy Scouts, but they got guns." Allison Corrigan, a family friend, said that Casey, who had reenlisted after the start of hostilities in Iraq, "definitely is one of those people who lived his life through a higher calling. He knew there was something big he was supposed to be part of." On a memorial website devoted to Casey's memory, friends Judy and Jim Brennan recall Casey as "a person of dignity and purpose. Being in the military was important to him." And in a piece titled "Missing Casey," the San Francisco Chronicle reported the Sheehan family told friends, "Casey was convinced that while in uniform he could help people, that Casey wanted to be a chaplain's assistant and perhaps make a career out of the Army." This, of course, is precisely what his mother did not want him to do. I don't blame her. I've been married to the military since 1987, the year my husband became a commissioned officer in the United States Army. It's not a warm, fuzzy career choice, and military wives spend a lot of time worrying about where their husbands might be sent. Today we have two healthy sons who have reached draft age at a time when their country is at war, and likely to remain so for many years. Do I want them following their dad into military service? I admit it wouldn't be my first choice. If it were up to mothers, no son or daughter would ever volunteer for military service. We don't like seeing our children do dangerous things, whether it's leaping from the top of jungle gyms or volunteering for rescue missions in Iraq, as Casey Sheehan did.

But if mothers really could pick their children's careers, what kind of a world would we have? We would wake up one morning to discover that we had no more soldiers, policemen or firemen, no freedom fighters, no prison guards or life guards. We would find ourselves in a world in which the strong preyed upon the weak, a world in which millions would be abandoned to the tender mercies of death squads and serial killers, to those who rape and torture, exploit and enslave. What a terrible world it would be.