Public Defenders and Soldiers Can Be Noble; Murders and Wars Can Never Be

My younger brother is a veteran Public Defender in New York City, providing free legal defense for his indigent clients accused of murder. His is a career steeped in tragedy, because in every one of his cases someone has died, and his defendants, if found guilty, will suffer the tragedy of spending lengthy portions of their lives locked away in prison.

My brother’s efforts may result in a conviction or an acquittal. The result may be just or unjust, deserved or not deserved. But nothing will change the underlying fact that another human being has been killed, unnaturally and violently. Nothing changes the fact that his clients, even those with a defense that can acquit them, are put under an intense spotlight for what is usually the worst moment of their lives.

My brother believes passionately in “equal protection under the law.” Based on his skills, his will, his work ethic, and his experience, he gives his clients a defense equal to the best any money could buy. I’m proud of what he does; it’s hard and good, noble and vital. He has the most intense and interesting job of anyone I know, and it’s a privilege to follow his cases closely.  On no occasion, however, have I ever felt like celebrating one of his “victories.”  Because at the end of the day, each of his cases involves a person recently alive and now a corpse.

Unlike with the death of a murder victim, there is a way to look at dying in a war as noble, to view it, as Lincoln famously said of the dead at Gettysburg, as sacrificing the “last full measure of devotion.” To see in each casualty of war an opportunity to further resolve that the cause for which they died will not be in vain. And who could deny that soldiers putting their lives in mortal danger for their country and to protect their fellow soldiers represent the best of us in their bravery and their valor. That’s certainly how I feel.

But war itself as noble? No. I cannot see war that way. War anywhere and everywhere is always a tragic failure. A failure of diplomacy, a failure of deterrence, and a failure by one side or the other, or both, of moral judgment. A tragedy for the dead and their bereaved families. A tragedy for the maimed and the raped, the displaced and the homeless. A tragedy for those made hungry and for those made to live in fear.

So, I cannot and will not celebrate war. And when I hear and read American pundits celebrating victories in the current war we are involved with, a war that others are fighting for us, when I encounter the grandiose statements and tone-deaf triumphalism of those feeding off this war like so many blood-sucking leeches, well, simply put, I am disgusted.

Countless times this year, I’ve turned for refuge to read what I consider the greatest of all poems on war. And I dream that if everyone would learn this poem and be moved by the power of its language, maybe its words would cast an incantatory spell to stop our awful human lust for blood.

Dulce et Decorum Est 

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.