This story somehow runs deeper than you’d expect…

Is it really just a question of ‘desertion is a crime’ ? Or is there more to it than meets the eye ? It could be just the reactions in this context that made me jump, since the topic has been brought up a while ago already. Yeah… I guess it’s the harsh ‘what he did was wrong, so no pity’ conclusion that bothered me.
Apart from the fact that it’s a simple non-sequitur error to state that XYZ did ABC, which is a crime, so he has forfeited the right to ask for sympathy or pity from his fellow humans.
There’s something shameful in the above situation and I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.
No matter what reasons the GI or any other GI in any other situation had or has to decide that desertion is better than anything he thinks awaits him in the near future, no matter how elaborate the rational reasoning might be (since the Vietnam war ‘psychological problems’ is a good way to make a cowardly decision noble in retrospective and earn your oppositions respect, even if they don’t approve what you did), it doesn’t make a desertion right. Let’s take the example of the textbook Vietnam GI, already full of doubts when shipped into the Theatre. He keeps his doubt, thinking that it’ll protect him from any atrocity, helps him to stay the human being he was before ever getting there. One day he can’t stand it and just wanders off. Desertion. In our post-Vietnam times, I am quite sure he would be considered a noble spirit that followed his doubts on the military and the cause. The crime suddenly becomes less terrible to us (the military officials wont agree). And why is that ? It’s circumstance.
But, why should this case be any better than the one GI who doesn’t have a noble reason. Only weariness, fear, alcohol, drugs maybe and desperation ?

Apart from the fact that nobody can with full authority state that somebody got what they deserved, how inhuman can you be to throw such a judgement around ? I am talking about inhuman as ‘not according to first human reactions’ such as pity, sympathy, shock… Is it the Christian talking in me or the Philosopher ? I have no idea… I tend to think both. Hard to tell.

But as a Philosopher defining what a hero is, and how the word is used, falls smack into my field. In the beginning of reasoning (Greek Academy) a hero was somebody who partook in the Universal Idea of ‘bravery’, most often it was linked with toughness, absence of fear, physical and psychological strength… and nobility. Somehow the notion of ‘hero’ is always linked with the just cause. The term of hero applied to a Nazi soldier somehow doesn’t fit, does it ?
But since political correctness has stripped all discourse of the terms ‘good’, ‘evil’ or ‘just war’, we’ve come more and more to a diverse stance towards a hero. A hero can be someone fighting for his rights without thought for his personal well being, it can be a soldier perhaps, or a fire-fighter rescuing somebody else at the expense of his own health. But let’s say that we’ve all settled for a circumstantial attribution of the term. A war veteran will most often reply that the heroes are the ones that didn’t leave the battlefield alive, and that nobody is just a hero because of some mystical calling he had. It’s circumstantial. You’re thrown into a situation where you’re challenged beyond your capabilities. Beyond your own possibilities. The ones that decide quickly enough, hard enough or clement enough and live up to the task or the situation get to be heroes.
John Mann who in a trench behind the little Dutch village of Son threw himself onto a grenade in order to save his squad was no doubt a hero. He sacrificed himself for his comrades. One dead is better than 6. All for liberty and the just cause.

And what about the ones that cannot make that decision ? What about the ones that cannot bear the responsibility of their own choices ? Deserters and Cowards ? Why are we so quick to judge them ? Again, a crime is a crime and no matter what reasoning is behind it, it stays a crime. I’m talking about the human judgement.

Isn’t it just more simpler to speak a quick judgement on someone who reminds us of our own doubts and deficiencies ? That someone could have been us… anywhere, any time ? Not having been in the situation, how can we be sure that we would have lived up to the task ? The argument is gratious, I know. But still, it’s a valuable one. It’s this argument that makes us different from an ‘inhuman’ dictatorship who doesn’t accept human weakness.

Accepting somebody else’s weakness makes us truly human. In the simply act of sympathy or pity in this problem, we remind ourselves of our own fears and doubts and our own limitations.
It doesn’t make a deserter a saint. But sitting in a warm room with a nice cup of tea, it’s the only reasoning that can be considered truly ‘human’… and being a simple philosopher and no soldier, the only one I’ll follow.