THE BELL CURVE -- Joseph N. Bell

Joseph N. Bell

I got a wistful, soul-searching letter this week from my grandson,

Trent Simpson, in Boulder, Colo. He had just turned 18 when the two World

Trade Center towers came down in New York and the whole country seemed to

be calling for war. He was feeling very vulnerable and more than a little

confused as “a legal citizen for fighting in our Army and eligible for

the draft.”

His confusion came from his strong feeling that “it isn’t right to

declare war against a country that is helpless against a full-out U.S.

military attack. What justice will there be in killing more innocent

civilians like those who were unfortunate enough to be in the WTC

towers?”

I’ve been asked a number of times about the difference between the

events of Sept. 11 and the attack on Pearl Harbor. And my grandson’s

letter catches the greatest difference of all: the clarity both of the

problem and the solution. Most of the 18-year-olds of my generation

couldn’t wait to join the fight against a clearly identified enemy that

had blindsided us at Pearl Harbor.

But we haven’t had that sort of clarity since. The most poignant

example in my experience that caught so graphically the bewilderment in

young people about their role in a national crisis came during the

Vietnam War.

For many years, we rented our home in Corona del Mar and spent family

summers at a lake cottage in northern Indiana. My three children grew up

with a group of nearby rural and farm kids with whom we all became very

close. Our last year of summering in Indiana took place during the heat

of the Vietnam War when many of these Indiana young people were

graduating from high school. Most of them would be going to work. They

wouldn’t be going to college. Or to the safety and security of the

National Guard with the help of influential parents. Or to an

orthodontist for braces that would keep them out of the military. Or to

Canada.

So they went to Vietnam.

One of these young men -- his name is Albert -- was drafted quickly

after his 18th birthday. He had never been out of Indiana. After three

months of training, he was sent to San Francisco for shipping out to

Vietnam. We were the only people he knew in California, and so -- in his

last hours in the States -- Albert phoned us. He was scared and

bewildered. He had no idea why we were in Vietnam or why he was being

sent there, and his phone call to us was like an umbilical that connected

him to the only world he knew.

And so we talked for a very long time, until there were longer and

longer silences that grew increasingly difficult to fill. But neither of

us wanted to cut the umbilical. Finally, Albert was summoned and had to

say a last goodbye. I remember holding the phone for several minutes

afterward, wondering about the ways of mankind that would send this young

man to a strange and distant country to fight for a cause he could

neither comprehend nor fix.

Albert was one of the lucky ones. He came home intact, with a head

full of memories he brings up with both reluctance and difficulty. And if

Vietnam was incomprehensible to most of the young people who had to fight

there, certainly our military adventures in Panama and Grenada and even

Iraq made little dent in the consciousness of incipient draftees.

I remember asking a classroom of students at UC Irvine the morning

after we put troops ashore in Grenada how they felt about this action.

Most of them didn’t even know it had taken place and saw no personal

threat -- therefore had little interest -- when it was explained to them.

We had dinner last week with a senior at Occidental College who was

appalled when she came to her classes distraught the day after the

terrorist attacks and was repeatedly asked by her fellow students what

was troubling her.

And so how can we compare the generation that responded to Pearl

Harbor with today’s young Americans? We were raised on 4th of July

picnics complete with patriotic speeches, John Phillips Souza’s martial

band music, a decade of sharing with our fellow citizens the ravages of

the Great Depression and a breathtaking level of political innocence.

None of these things are true of today’s young people. The vestiges of

war that they see and feel are the confusions and agonies of Vietnam, not

the clarity of World War II. Those lucky enough to be born with the right

skin color and middle-class background have grown up in a period of

blissful peace and prosperity. Those not so lucky have grown up with a

heavy dose of cynicism. A sense of obligation to their country is

frequently a fuzzy concept, not so much rejected as puzzling.

These are outrageous generalizations, growing from my limited

observations, that may be quite wrong. But right or wrong, they are

understandable. Dismaying, perhaps, but understandable. And now these

young people are being asked to join up in a war on terrorism.

Right now, they don’t know what that means -- and neither do their

parents or grandparents when asked to enlighten them. We all hope the

volume of war rhetoric can be tuned down to reflect the careful and

intelligent steps we and our allies have thus far taken to address the

international blight of terrorism.

I hope the young people who see themselves at risk for conscription

understand and support these efforts. It is neither a time for antiwar

demonstrations nor cowboy talk. I tried to say this to my grandson, and I

think he listened.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.