Op-Ed Column: Boots on the Ground, Hearts on Their Sleeves

NYTimes, December 2, 2003, A31

By DAVID BROOKS

Soldiers in all wars are called upon to be heroes, but our

men and women in Iraq are called upon to define a new sort

of heroism. First, they must endure the insanity of war,

fighting off fedayeen ambushes, withstanding the suicide

bombings and mortars, kicking down doors and searching

homes.

But a day or an hour or a few minutes later, they are

called upon to enter an opposite moral universe. They are

asked to pass out textbooks, improvise sewer systems and

help with budgets. Some sit in on town council meetings to

help keep the discussions on track. Some act like

foundation program officers, giving seed money to promising

local initiatives.

Trained as trigger-pullers, many are also asked in theater

to be consultants and aldermen. They are John Wayne, but

also Jane Addams.

Can anybody think of another time in history when a

comparable group of young people was asked to be at once so

brave, fierce and relentless, while also being so

sympathetic, creative and forbearing?

When you read the dispatches from Iraq, or the online

diaries many soldiers keep, or the e-mail they send home,

you quickly sense how hard it is to commute between these

two universes. Yet the most important achievements seem to

occur on the border between chaos and normalcy.

At spontaneous moments, when order threatens to break down,

the soldiers, aviators and marines jump in and coach the

Iraqis on the customs and habits of democracy. They try to

weave that fabric of civic trust that can't be written into

law, but without which freedom becomes anarchy.

For example, in a New Yorker article, George Packer

describes an incident in the life of Capt. John Prior. He

was inside a gas station when a commotion erupted outside.

A mob of people was furiously accusing a man of butting in

line and stealing gasoline. Prior established that the man

was merely a government inspector checking the quality of

the fuel. Frazzled and exhausted, Prior took the chance to

teach the mob a broader lesson: "The problem is that you

people accuse each other without proof! That's the

problem!"

Another soldier, who keeps a Weblog, collects toys and

passes them out to Iraqi children. He brought a pile of

toys to an orphanage, but the paid staff at the place

rushed the pile to grab the toys for themselves - "like

sharks in a feeding frenzy," he writes. He has learned that

if he stations himself with an M-16 over the toys, things

go smoothly.

Another soldier writes of his dismay at seeing Iraqi

parents give their kids toy guns as presents after Ramadan.

He wonders, Haven't they had enough death? Don't they

realize how dangerous it is for a kid to wander the street

with a piece of plastic that looks like an AK-47?

When you read the diaries and the postings of the soldiers

in Iraq, you see how exhausted they are. You see that their

feelings about the Iraqis are as contradictory as the

Iraqis' feelings about them. You see their frustration and

yearning to go home.

But despite all this, their epic bouts of complaining are

interrupted by bursts of idealism. Most of them seem to

feel, deep down, some elemental respect for the Iraqis and

sympathy for what they have endured. Far more than the

population at home, the soldiers in the middle of the

conflict believe in their mission and are confident they

will succeed.

When you read their writings you see what thorough

democrats they are. They are appalled at the thought of

dominating Iraq. They want to see the Iraqis independent

and governing themselves. If some president did want to

create an empire, he couldn't do it with these people.

Their faith in freedom governs their actions.

Most of all, you see what a challenging set of tasks they

have been given, and how short-staffed they are. And yet

you sense that in this war, as in so many others, the

improvising skill of the soldiers on the ground will make

up for the cosmic screw-ups of the people up the chain of

command.

If anybody is wondering: Where are the young idealists?

Where are the people willing to devote themselves to causes

larger than themselves? They are in uniform in Iraq,

straddling the divide between insanity and order.