Reflecting on the op-ed of the quintessential chicken-hawk William Kristol, who sat out the Vietnam War at Harvard, in which he criticizes Barack Obama for not listing the military as a form of national service, I am inclined to think that maybe we as a culture have gotten it wrong all these years. Being a soldier is a dirty, dangerous, and, yes, necessary job. For that, our troops deserve our respect and support. So do our garbagemen, sewer cleaners, cannery workers, meat packers, fishermen, and coal miners — but we do not make speeches and give out medals to them, even when they die horrible deaths in the line of duty. If, like the ancient Chinese, we exalted scholarship over warmaking; if we regarded gutting men as no more romantic than gutting fish, if we refused to allow the bright shining lie of the parade ground to obscure the truth of the trenches, then perhaps we would be taking a step away from war. When we truly come to view war as an ugly necessity rather than a glorious high-tech adventure, then perhaps we will be ready to shoulder the awesome responsibility of life and death that our military wields.