They scribbled FTA at Marathon, too

We like to think the best of our soldiers. It’s common to dismiss reports of abuse, such as those that came out of Abu Ghraib and that come still, on occasion, out of Guantanamo , as the acts of – as one of my former Gonzaga University journalism students called them – “a few bad apples.”

Yet those of us who have been in the military, especially those of us who have served in war zones, know that we all have, at one time or another, acted in ways that make rotting Braeburns or Fujis look fresh by comparison. I, for one, can tell you stories …

But, dog be praised, you don’t have to listen to me. You don’t have to listen to the stories told by any of us always-considered-to-be-basket-case individuals known as Vietnam veterans . Just pick up most anything written by, or capturing the experience of, today’s common soldier and you’ll hear the same kinds of experiences.

I’m referring, of course, to books such as Evan Wright’s “Generation Kill,” Anthony Swofford’s “Jarhead” or John Crawford’s “The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell.” Each, in one way or another, captures the reality of war in language that most any veteran can relate to – even, if they were still around to bitch, vets whose service dated back to the Persian Wars.

I can just hear a hoplite at, say, the Battle of Thermopylae , as his phalanx trotted toward the Persian line: “Damn, Dimitrius, not only did we have to give up that three-day pass to Galaxadi, not only did we have to run all the way here just to get eaten by mosquitoes as big as pomegranates and not only are we expected to spend the next couple of days subsisting only on dates and a bit of goat cheese, but now old man Leonidas expects us to smile while we smite the Persians with our spathas. Yeah, right!”