Last Sunday's Washington Post featured a remarkably insightful editorial written by a Soldier named William Quinn. After serving a tour in Iraq from 2005-2006, he returned to attend Georgetown as an undergraduate. "The only feeling I've ever had that was more surreal than arriving in a war zone," he begins, "was returning from one."
I find it frustrating that Facebook is a bigger part of most students' lives than the war...I may be prejudiced, but many of my college peers seem self-absorbed. I didn't want to end up like that...I have lamented in the past about the decline of the American University, particularly Chicago, but Quinn's perspective is uniquely suited to demonstrating its shortcomings. The war in Iraq has no analogue within American History, because it's minimal impact on the civilian population is unprecedented. It is present on campus, but only as an "issue" - an opportunity for self-promoting advocacy and intellectual masturbation - often having the remarkable effect of demonstrating self-delusion rather than the intended inflation of already bloated sophomoric egos.
The fact that the average college student is unaffected by the war is as much a consequence of an increasingly relativistic and self-promoting educational system as it is a side-effect of a technologically advanced military unlike any in the world. It is almost ironic, then, that the very tools by which we are able to prevent drastic changes in the civilian way of life during war (avoiding the draft, incredibly low casualty rates, revolutionary weapon and intelligence technology), have led to a less engaged and supportive civilian populous because of their separation from the conflict.
It shouldn't surprise Quinn, therefore, that the average student is much more concerned with resumes and reactionary politics than self-sacrifice and "the culture of duty" - never before has a population been asked to do so little as part of a war effort. It is only a sad but predictable outcome, then, that they choose to do just that.
