Volume 50, Number 9 · May 29, 2003
The Horror Is Seductive
By John Gregory Dunne
Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
by Anthony Swofford
Scribner, 260 pp., $24.00
The volunteer military has always been most enthusiastically, even devoutly, embraced by those who would not themselves dream of volunteering—or of encouraging their children to do so. Among the 535 members of Congress, just one—Senator Tim Johnson (D–South Dakota)—has an enlisted son in the Iraqi combat zone. Senator Johnson's son, a staff sergeant in the 101st Airborne, has also been in harm's way in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Afghanistan—four wars in five years; only a handful of others on Capitol Hill have offspring in the ranks. The country may have been on fire with war fever, but not many young men and women sold the pasture to buy a horse. The last time that happened was in World War II.
Review, 3770 words
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