If brave Olaf “whose warmest heart recoiled at war” were alive today, would he tell the President With His Head Up His Ass what e.e. cummings once had him tell a West Point colonel? “I will not kiss your fucking flag.”
It would be unfeeling at the least, given the stunning 5-column photo on the front page of this morning’s New York Times and the accompanying story of a young soldier killed, of others wounded, on a foot patrol in Iraq.
Besides, the absence of a military draft and the use of an all-volunteer force for making war tend to neutralize the very idea of Olaf the C.O. If you’re a conscientious objector, what are you doing in the military in the first place? (Pace Pablo Paredes, the sailor who refused to deploy to Iraq, filed a C.O. application and — surprise! — avoided prison time.)
Still, Olaf certainly would not say “DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI,” the famous words of the Roman poet Horace that are etched above the west entrance of the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. (Translation: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”)
Olaf didn’t believe in patriotic gore. And when saying so got him beaten up and reamed with a hot bayonet, he made it even plainer, “There is some shit I will not eat.”
Would that all of us were as brave as Olaf.
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