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Does anyone today remember the sad lyrics from a World War I song:

"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?"

I'm sure Greek mothers sang a similar lament as they watched their sons march off to fight the Trojans in 1194 BC. Since so-called civilization began, democracies, kingdoms, sheikdoms, people's republics, motherlands and fatherlands have been taking youths from their homes, washing their brains, giving them spiffy uniforms, lethal weapons and sending them off to kill and be killed. Sorry to say, it won't stop any time soon, if ever.

I sure as hell wouldn't voluntarily send my children off to fight a war, this one or any other. Don't get me wrong. I've never marched in an anti-war demonstration nor admired Jane Fonda or Sean Penn. Unlike certain Presidents, I've never gone to England to escape the draft, nor joined the Air National Guard and got my daddy to keep me from being deployed to combat.

Basically, I'm not against defending my country. In fact, I did just that when I served in the US Navy in World War II and the Korean War. However, in my advanced old age, I've finally come to the conclusion that like the mother's sad song, I didn't raise my children so that some maniacal dictators or religious freaks could kill them.

As it happened in Korea and Vietnam, our latest ill-conceived war is now becoming another endless stalemate on the other side of the world. I just don't want my children to die so that oil industry fat cats here and abroad can get fatter.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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