One afternoon in 11th grade, while flipping through a magazine, I came across an advertisement for the Marines. It touted the glory of being one of the few and the proud, but my eyes went straight to the offer at the bottom. If I filled out a form with my mailing address and phone number I would receive a free monocular with the Marines logo emblazoned on the side. A free monocular! With visions of night-vision dancing in my head, I scribbled my info and sent the card away.

The monocular would not come for six months, but in just one week I received a different sort of present. Marine Sgt. Lopez called my house that week and every week for several months, asking me to enlist. I don't know if our Armed Forces were desperate or if there was indeed a strong correlation between free monocular giveaways and Marine enlistment, but the weekly calls always shocked me. You want me to join the Marines? I tried to let Sgt. Lopez down easy. Like Daphne, who fled a love-drunk Apollo so far as to be transformed into a laurel tree, so did I duck and dive Sgt. Lopez until my transformation into a college student, when he gave up.

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Sure, we'd been at war in some capacity since I was in the eighth grade. Yes, I was no stranger to the news reports and death tolls coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq. But I never imagined that that these were wars in which I would be a participant. I didn't and still don't know a single person who has fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. I didn't and still don't know a single person who has even considered fighting. As a New Yorker, I know several people who were directly affected by the 9/11 attacks, but even my proximity to the events never inspired me to join the armed forces. (Granted I was only 14 at the time.) Enlisting wasn't just rare among the white, urban, private-schooled students like myself; it wasn't even on the radar.

So I could wax technical about the calls for a troop increase in Afghanistan, but can I really argue for sending more of our men and women abroad when I have never even met a soldier, much less a family that has lost a relative in the fighting? To me, troop numbers are just that: numbers. At 21 -- if Sgt. Lopez would take me back -- I could potentially be one of the tens of thousands that Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask to fight. But as one who grew up with the privilege of always knowing he would go to college, here I sit as an "armchair general" (or really just a "dorm room general"), looking at proposed troop increases almost unable to realize that real people could be shipped off to fight. People my age, many of whom will die.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, a "high-risk" increase would add 10,000-15,000 soldiers to our current force of 68,000 Americans and 40,000 NATO troops. A "medium-risk" increase would send 25,000 soldiers; a "low-risk," 45,000. For the record, that's risk to our mission in Afghanistan, not to Americans or the war's public favor.

The only way to support a troop increase is to also support the greater mission in this, our "good" and "necessary" war. That mission is ostensibly to keep us safe, to prevent a future terrorist attack like the one that got us in this Afghan war (not to mention the one in Iraq, albeit under dubious evidence). How do we accomplish something so broad? Stabilize the ramshackle republic teetering on the twin fault lines of ethnic bickering and widespread corruption? Where terrorism scares people away from voting centers? Where the beautiful landscape lies untouched by modern infrastructure? Where the most profitable farming -- the one opiate of the masses -- is, in fact, in opiates?

What do I know? I've never been to Afghanistan. Politics Daily's own David Wood is there right now, but a recent post tells of complications, confusion and struggle. According to one soldier, reporters are oversimplifying the reality of the situation. To think our understanding of the war at home is in any way simple gives me a headache.

Is it the best we can do to simply hope that politicians and generals understand what is going on better than we do? Defense Secretary Robert Gates says to hold on, that President Obama's strategy is soon to take effect. I don't think we should be ashamed if our patience wears thin for a war that has no clear strategy those at home can digest. Perhaps Afghanistan is too complex for a clear strategy, but if we don't understand it, we can't be expected to support it and prolong it. Gates has not come out for or against the troop increase, but if Sgt. Lopez asked me to enlist or to recommend a friend to enlist for this quagmire of a war, my response would be immediate: no way. Even though this is the "good" war. Even though we fight against terrorism -- a rationale we can legitimately defend. Even if there were a free monocular included.


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