Ultimate Sacrifice
Gallagher, Maggie
ULTIMATE SACRIFICE WHEN MOM AND DAD GO OFF TO WAR BY MAGGIE GALLAGHER I n long lines for security checkpoints, many of us are learning the answer to the question George W. Bush posed in his...
...And if it is not necessary, is it even a civilized thing to do...
...In other words, for a small child, an eternity...
...Kody of course has no idea why his morn, dad, and sister suddenly disappeared...
...Here's my question: Why...
...she was still in high school...
...The snakes are still looking for placement...
...But is it necessary...
...Or the only parent they have...
...It is an immense, unremarked toll of suffering small children and babies are being asked to pay...
...These are just a few of the thousands of children asked to make pretty much the ultimate sacrifice, from a child's point of view: to risk, not just one parent, but both...
...If it's necessary, toss me an M-16 and I will figure out what to do with it...
...Are we as a nation in such desperate straits that we must ask single morns to fight and die for our country...
...His home has dissolvedm his half-sister has been packed off to her mom's house, while Kody will go and live with grandma...
...So now, Kody is parentless, at least for the duration...
...Nor are these women complaining, or agitating to be released...
...For most of his young life Kody Kravitz has shared a Pennsylvania apartment with his mom and dad, his half-sister Shaiyann and their pet snakes...
...20 speech before Congress: "Americans are asking, what is expected of us...
...It's not easy to find out how many children are so affected...
...But few of us stateside will be asked for anything like the sacrifices 14-month-old Kody is being asked to make...
...Recruited years before they had children under slogans like, "Join the Army, be a journalist...
...We hear their voices as part of staged photo opsmthe troops going off to war--not as part of any grievance campaign...
...They also serve who only sit and wait...
...If it were necessary, then of course, it would be different...
...Conservatively, call it 150,000 kids...
...Like six months or a year...
...I do not blame the military for policies crafted largely by civilians with many things in mind other than national defense...
...Suzanna and Mary Connolly are two-year-old twins...
...By the time I get home, he'll be calling my mother Mommy and my father Daddy...
...Yes I know, these women all volunteered...
...Of course military service requires sacrifice from families...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2OO...
...The plan is to send the gifts to Milwaukee to stay with her brother, whom they have never met...
...Kody is not alone...
...Their willingness to serve is commendable...
...His mother joined the Army Reserves while Contributing editor Maggie Gallagher writes a nationally syndicated column...
...9 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 2 5...
...Now we send single mothers off to war, and nobody raises a peep...
...His father is a GI...
...The effects of long-term separation from both parents (or a child's only parent) are themselves, deeply traumatic...
...Daddy's been deployed.Their mom, in the Navy Reserves, struggles with what will happen when she is called...
...Can we say the same about our unreflective willingness to order Kody's morn, and thousands like her, into harm's way...
...Arlene Innis is a 27-year-old single morn who joined the Army a year ago so she could better provide for her two kids, seven-year-old Shante and Sharica, 4. Now she is trying to figure out how to explain they might have to "go to Grandma's house for a little while...
...That these women are bravely willing to live up to their commitments, I do not doubt...
...There is no way to explain this to Kody, he's just too little to understand," his morn, Jaime Strathmeyer, told the New York Times...
...In his 1998 book, Women in the Military (Regnery Press), Brian Mitchell estimated their were 24,000 single moms and about an equal number of single custodial dads, plus more than 50,000 dual-service couples...
...In World War II, the country agonized and debated before sending married fathers to fight and die for their country...
...But no doubt by thestrict demands of contractual morality, we are justified at holding these mothers to their word...
...But creating 150,000 parentless kids (temporary orphans, really) seems more like what a heartless enemy would do than what a great and generous nation would choose to inflict on its own children...
...And equally obvious, crafting military policies that lessen the toll would take time and cause controversy among adults with gender agendas...
...Do we feel good about asking Kody and thousands of other young kids to risk both of their parents, or their only parent, for us...
...ULTIMATE SACRIFICE WHEN MOM AND DAD GO OFF TO WAR BY MAGGIE GALLAGHER I n long lines for security checkpoints, many of us are learning the answer to the question George W. Bush posed in his landmark Sept...
Vol. 34 • November 2001 • No. 8
