Once A Soldier

During the Sept. 11, 2011, Republican presidential debatein Tampa, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas—a staunch advocateof limited government and a more modest militaryfootprint—offered a surprising statistic about the reach of the U.S.armed forces.

"We're under great threat, because we occupy somany countries," Paul said. "We're in 130 countries.We have 900 bases around the world. We're goingbroke. The purpose of al-Qaeda was to attack us,invite us over there, where they can target us. Andthey have been doing it. They have more attacksagainst us and the American interests per monththan occurred in all the years before 9/11, but we'rethere occupying their land. And if we think wecan do that and not have retaliation, we're kiddingourselves. We have to be honest with ourselves.What would we do if another country, say, China,did to us what we do to all those countries overthere?"

To conceive its purposes a government needs its armies. Withouta draft, occupations abroad require voluntary enlistments. Thoughhardship and risk of life are an inevitable part of the package, thequotas our government requires in willing bodies never go a-begging.How is this to be explained?

Like a rat in a science lab, a human is the end product ofconditioning. In the case of the human, those exerting theconditioning have the built-in advantages accruing with language.The ready example is the word soldier. The word in our mother-tongueis so familiar that it is scarcely ever dissected in our mindsfor its true meaning: professional killer. The term hit man willlikely bestir our fascinated moral repugnance, while soldier, the tagidentifying the hit man issued a uniform, slips by unchallenged.

But of course it requires more conditioning than languagealone. Since to take another's life is the worst act we can perform,for perversion to the assurance that it is acceptable the envelopingculture must be massaged. Never fear. The populace is as docile asthe lab rat. Key ideas need only be injected: that foreigners are asdifferent as brachiating simians, and the world is full of frighteningenemies; that one's own soldiers are simply defenders; and that thereis nothing more noble than to die for one's country.

Yet there is an underlying dilemma, after all, not so easy toresolve. Are all wars equally bad wars? Is there not, even in theory, awar that could be justifiably fought? Is there absolutely no instancewhen an act of violence could be conscionably sanctioned?

Though the tale I tell here is of a man who was to evolve intoone of the most intense and unstinting opponents to war alive inthe 21st century, he was not born with answers to these questionspre-packaged in his placenta. Blessed with fine, loving parents,the subject of this book lived out a childhood in which all of thisreconstructed mindset rested unquestioned, cheek to jowl, alongsidethe radical proposition continually repeated within his pious familythat, as someone said, we should love our enemies. David's father,drafted for service after the Korean War, was imbued with theconviction that the U.S. had twice performed heroic rescue of theworld. By the age of four David was already drawing pictures ofplanes which, in his imagination, wreaked havoc on the Axis hisloving father had helpfully demonized for him.

David Dionisi was not, however, a cruel child. Whether bygenetic predisposition or daylight influences, he was from the get-goa friend of the good, and conscientiously so. But rare is the youth,much less the child, who has any difficulty harnessing himself withthe role of hit man as defender. Thus David—one of the friendsof the good ready to venture forth to thrash those whose vile soulsbodied forth in menace from the alien unknown. Hence the paradoxthat, as resolved from the earliest age, he would serve the good bybecoming a warrior.

The Korean War called, and his military engagement began atage 17, lasting eight years all told, first in the army reserve and in thesecond half in active service. As a more thoughtful Christian thanmost, deep within he knew that to be a trained killer ran directlycontrary to the teachings of Jesus. But he was able to let thosesleeping dogs lie. Fortunately what would prevent his ever beingtested as to whether he could pull the trigger on his fellow man washis own brilliance. In every instruction program to which he wasassigned he rose to take first-in-the-class honors. This catapultedhim to what he had set his sights for from the beginning: becomingan Army Intelligence officer. While some of his peers in the wakeof boot camp were handed such plums as Italy and Germany, hewas handed the far less desirable assignment of Korea. Never mind;David had not enlisted for a picnic.

His first weapon in actual use was not an M-16 but a typewriter.But his superiors were quick to see his exceptional leadershipcapabilities. He would move up with his clean security clearance frompositions at platoon to battalion and finally at division headquarters.One must wonder if anything in his training had an impact equalto his introduction to the computer, over which he was to exercisemastery in later years like a jinni sitting lotus-fashion sky-high ona magic carpet. It was in 1981 that he learned his skills at the AirForce Telecommunications School.

It was the Army, however, that he entered in 1984, and not theAir Force. His reasons for the switch tell us something about the17 year old both favorable and naïve. He had decided he wanted nopart of dropping bombs from the air as quite obviously this involved,however inadvertently, the deaths of great numbers of innocentpeople. It was his thinking, however, that in missions on the groundthe American soldier would be able to see that the innocent werecarefully protected even as the enemy was pursued. A time wouldnot be long in coming when he would realize his own former naivety,and realize that by the very nature of war such expectations must beunrealistic to the point of absurdity.

His tasks in any event would involve neither the droppingof bombs nor the aiming of lethal weapons. His job as the teamcaptain in the DMZ between the two Koreas was guarding againsta sudden strike from the north, to intercept suspicious intelligenceand be prepared to sound the alarm in case of an invasion. AlthoughDavid largely escaped combat in the familiar foxhole form, he wasno armchair surveyor of distant battlefronts. The team he wasassigned to lead was based smack in the middle of the 151-milewide demilitarized zone that stood between the two halves of Korea'sdivided heart. Spies and military teams sent in nighttime operationsacross the North's border kept things edgy, prompting the men towonder if the "D" in DMZ wasn't inappropriate. And there wasone...