I talked about a confrontation that I had the week before last that I thought exemplified this kind of notion and my own struggle with getting in touch with the hunter/warrior and, in a sense, putting my own body in the gap, as it were, for something that was right. There are precious few people, it seems to me, nowadays that are willing to put their ideology on the line and speak up for what's right and true and good, and far fewer are willing to actually put their body on the line and possibly spill their blood for what is right and true and good. To me this is a serious loss. It is a serious loss, not only in terms of male image--men losing touch with themselves--but it's a serious loss for our culture because I think--though it can be confused--it functions as a very important role in our society, in our households, our communities and the nation as a whole.

In the last week I've had an opportunity to reflect on the man-thing notion, the hunter/warrior issue as it applies to something entirely different. In fact, it's something that you might not have connected with this whole thing, but it strikes me that there is a very strong connection.

Just this weekend we are in the process of putting 20,000 Marines on a boat and shipping them over to the Horn of Africa to assist in the distribution of food to tens of thousands of refugees forced from their homes by both famine and civil strife. And in many cases, I think the famine owes it source to the civil war, at least in some measure. These people are dying at the rate of 1000 people per day. So our President, along with the Congress, has made the determination that we will do something to help and we've sent military forces over to assist in the distribution of food stuffs to people who are starving because a big part of the problem has been the presence of armed gangs, gangsters essentially, thugs, self-styled territorial leaders that are interfering with the process because they have political ambitions.

Now what has amazed me to some degree is not that some questions were raised, but that they were raised with such passion and such concern to the degree that some people suggested that this was not an appropriate venture. Some comments were, "We should not send troops to Somalia because there's no clear-cut objective there. We have nothing to gain there. Our personal interests are not at stake. We are putting our boys at risk. Some people could get shot. We might be stuck there losing American lives and for what? We have nothing to gain." In other words, this could cost us something not just in terms of money but in human lives. And not just human lives, because human lives are in fact being spent on a daily basis there in massive numbers, but the human lives in view here are American lives. That somehow touches us differently. And of course, there is the common objection that we cannot police the entire world. We should let someone else do this. We should let the private sector get involved and let them take over.

It is not inappropriate to raise these kinds of questions because certainly some of these things have to be worked out and answered before we can take action. But at the same time, I am stunned that just raising these kinds of questions is enough to give people serious pause as to whether we should be involved in this cause at all. Even though we are sending troops over, there is a bit of a stir by people who have suggested that this is not the right thing to do for the reasons raised in the objections.

I'll tell you the connection with the man thing. It strikes me that these kinds of objections raised in the way they have been, considering the circumstances that the Somalis are facing, considering the cost and risk involved for us, is evidence to me that this "men without chests" problem that we experience on an individual level is taking on national proportions. In other words I'm asking myself, are we becoming a country without a chest?

About twenty years ago now, in the late 60s or early 70s, there was a very tragic circumstance that obtained in New York City. A young lady was accosted by a mugger, she was attacked and beaten. She started to scream and lights went on in the windows and people looked out and the attacker fled. But no one came out to help young Kitty Genovese, no one cared about getting involved because it might cost them something. They didn't want to take the risk and the attacker came back and beat on her again. She screamed more and people looked out their windows and the attacker fled a second time. But still no one came to help and the attacker returned. It took three times before he finally killed her.

Then the people came down because the police arrived. Thirty or forty different people watched Kitty Genovese get beaten to death. They were interviewed and asked why didn't you help? This was a bully. This was a person who would have run just with the least bit of help for her. Just the screaming and the lights coming on frightened him away twice. People said, "We didn't want to get involved. We didn't want to take the risk." We looked at that as a nation and stared in horror at what we were becoming.

I get the same feeling now that we are in a similar situation now on a national basis when we watch people dying by the thousands, being beaten up by some sparsely armed thugs. We ask ourselves, "Maybe it's better to pull the shades, close the window and not get involved because it doesn't really affect us. We have nothing to gain."

Some have suggested that we have no clear-cut objective here. I think what they mean by that is that we have no policy yet about this kind of thing and unless we have a policy on how we get in and out, we may get in and not be able to get out. So we have to have a clear-cut policy on how we deal with these things or we might be forced to come to the aid of other people and this could snowball and before you know it we're policing the whole world.

My response to that is this. When you try to come up with definitions for certain kinds of things sometimes it's hard to figure out how to come up with clear-cut definitions that include necessary and sufficient conditions. But in the absence of a clear-cut policy on a particular thing, sometimes we can look at something and say, "I don't know how to define it but that's one right there." I think we're faced with some situations in the national scene where we say, "I don't know that we have a clear-cut policy on how to deal with these kinds of things. We haven't worked that all out yet. But I know one thing, this is something that we must respond to." I think that's the case in Somalia.

It may be helpful for us in the future to decide on the kinds of conditions that would compel us to act, but in the absence of those clear-cut policies it doesn't mean that we can't take steps to resolve and help and involve ourselves in a circumstance that appears to need our attention immediately. If we don't give it attention and wait another seven days it means 7,000 more people die. If we wait another two weeks or two months that means tens of thousands of people will die while we are trying to come up with a policy that covers all circumstances. My friends, we don't need to do that when we have a clear case example of something that we must respond to. I think that we are facing that in Somalia.

Someone said we can't be the policeman for the world, and it's right to raise this concern. We can't be the policeman for the world. What do we have to gain in this situation anyway? I have a couple of responses.

There are two response to policing the world. First, we aren't policing the world. The world is not what's at stake here; Somalia is what's at stake here. We're not talking about taking care of the rest of the world. We're dealing with a specific situation in a specific part of the world where thousands of people are dying and we can do something to stop it. It strikes me that we can do that at the same time without taking on the responsibility of policing the entire world. So my first point is that we are not policing the world.

The second point is really a question. When people say we can't police the world, my questions is why not? What's wrong with us taking some moral leadership in circumstances in the world that we can do something about and where we can have impact and influence for good. I am not talking about imperialism. I am not talking about colonialism. I am not really talking about pax Americana, that it's our responsibility to keep peace all over the world. But it strikes me that when you are a big, strong person in a community in which you wield force and ability to change things, that with that ability comes somewhat of a responsibility to use it to good ends. If you are a wealthy person in an impoverished community and you have more money than you can use, it seems to me that since you have the opportunity and the capability you therefore have a moral imperative, an obligation to help those within your reach, to help out. And I think when we think about it on the community level most people would approach it that way. I think that the same thing applies on a global level.

There are things on our globe because of the position that we're in because of our military and economic strength, and in fact there's been much spoken of about this bad economy and the recession, we are still far and away the wealthiest country in the world. Even those of us who are poor are wealthy by most other standards. If you think differently you should spend time in other countries.

I understand that the Marines have had a lot briefing and are watching films to prepare these hardened, fighting men who are trained to kill to stomach what they're about to witness in Somalia because it's very extreme. I think that's good for them. I think it's good that they're in a position to go to another country and see how miserably other people have to live. They can see the deprivation that other people have to live under. They can see the pain that most of the world experiences on a daily basis and then be so much more thankful for what we have here. Then maybe we'll look at this recession in a different light.

But at the same time, they will be proud of the fact that we are in a position to help those who have less. I think that's a very important factor here. In one sense I think we can be in some measure the policemen of the world. We can look abroad to other circumstances that we may or may not have a national compelling interest in, an interest that helps us. There may be some things out there that don't help us at all, that just help other people. Frankly, I am proud that my country is willing to put our cash on the line, our military strength on the line, we are even going to put our blood on the line to help other people, even when we have nothing to gain for ourselves. That is a country with a chest, my friends. That is a country to be proud of. What good is it when we help other people just so we can get something in return? You don't even admire other individuals who believe that. But when you see individuals around you that do good to others even when they will gain nothing, that's the kind of person you admire and want to be. Why is it that when we try to do that as a country we are castigated? Now, I do believe that we can't police every situation under every circumstance and we can't help out every person who has a need. There are a few questions we have to ask to sift out where we should place the resources that we have.

A couple of weeks ago I witnessed a rather unfortunate situation. I was visiting friends in Redondo and a woman with her child in her arms came running in in tears and a bit of hysterics and said something like, "Randy's been hit by a car." I don't recall if that's the right name. But the first question I asked was if Randy was a child or an animal. It turned out that Randy was a small terrier, a family pet. The dog had been knocked by a van and it was dead. It was bleeding profusely out of its mouth onto the road. The child had been removed from the circumstance. Some of the men and myself went out and gathered the dog from the pavement and cleaned up the blood.

My reflection was that it was good, not that the dog died, but it was good that we had an opportunity to participate in that. Not just men, but the woman. And not just the woman, but the child. The reason I say that is because for Americans life is extremely sanitized. We don't see death.

I lived in Thailand for seven months in a small village and worked in a refugee camp and we saw death all the time. We saw life lived out on the edge. What it does is to put you in touch with life as it really is, not the overly and excessively sanitized version that we are exposed to in this country. We don't see dead things. We don't see animals butchered so that we might eat them. We just see steaks in the supermarket. We don't have old people around us in our homes anymore so we don't see grandma or grandpa passing away in bed. That's not part of our life. We remove people from the public view that are aging and in pain and that are suffering and close to death. And sometimes that's a dismal thing to do, although sometimes it's done for their medical care. But many times I think it's a way to get them out of sight and it would be better if they died peacefully at home where the whole family could participate in the death process.

This is why I think it's valuable for those Marines that are getting exposed to this because they realize that death is a very real part of life. And there's a lot of pain and suffering and ugliness in the world and it's good as rounded and living human beings that we are part of and witness that so that we might know life as it really is and not just the sanitized version in the United States that I think causes a lot of problems down the line when you consider the pain and suffering and difficulty that we face.

Now I mentioned a moment ago that there are a few questions we have to ask to sift out where we should place the resources that we have. I don't know why we can't be the policeman of the world because it's good for us to respond to circumstances where we can help out even when we don't have anything to gain for ourselves.

The questions we must ask are, first of all, what is at stake? There are some circumstances that are just more dismal than others. In this case we have 1000 people dying per day. That's critical and I think that means there's a lot at stake. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves what's at stake in terms of human rights violations because that's the kind of thing that's happening. Maybe in Bosnia-Herzegovina it's the case that there are such egregious human rights violations that it creates a moral imperative for us to get involved.

I understand that Proverbs says to mess with a quarrel that's not your own is like taking a dog by the ears. We have to be judicious in deciding what we get into. Proverbs isn't saying, by the way, that it's a sin to get involved with quarrels that are not your own. Remember that Proverbs is a book on wise living. It's suggesting that it may not be wise to get into a quarrel. But I think what's in view there is a quarrel between two people that are equally matched. If you're down at Gilley's doing the two step and a couple of cowboys want to duke it out you don't get in between them because they may end up duking it out with you. But it's a different situation when you have a bully beating up on someone that's weaker. That's the kind of thing that Scripture speaks to frequently. And this is where I think an issue of national sovereignty becomes a secondary issue.

We shouldn't get into every country that is doing something wrong, nor is it wise to do so, especially when it's a civil war and the combatants are equally matched. However, when there is an issue of serious human rights violation and you have a big thug, essentially, beating up on little people and killing them, people that cannot defend themselves, then I think it creates a moral imperative for those around them that can act. And this is the second issue, whether we can do something about it. What is the cost and will the cost be commensurate with our ability to make a difference?

Now we couldn't do much when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. They were arguably the second strongest power in the world. It was a major super power and if we'd messed with them in that situation the cost would have been dear, not just for us but for the rest of the globe, possibly. So it required that we rattle our sabers in that situation but not get involved.

In Iraq there was an entirely different situation. There you had a man who was a despot and, though some human life was at risk and there were human rights violations that were part of the scenario here, we had another problem. The problem was oil. Now I don't think of oil in the Iraqi situation in a strictly economic sense. I think it of as a tool of despotism. Here was a man who was poised to abscond with significant oil reserves of the world and having done so could wield economic despotism on the rest of the world. To say that the Iraqi War was about oil is like saying that the Second World War was about real estate. Real estate was the currency of despotism for Hitler. In the Iraqi situation oil was the currency of despotism and that's why it was necessary for us to act because we could do something about it and make a tremendous accomplishment for good.

When we take those factors into consideration in this particular situation, we can do something here. The military threat is minimal, friends. These are a bunch of thugs. You saw them on T.V., they're just a bunch of bullies with machine guns. They aren't exactly the strack troops of Ethiopia. We go in there with a couple of battalions and like any bullies and thugs, they're going to run and leave those people alone. That means that with a very small risk we can do a lot of good in that situation.

I know we have homeless in our own country. But I think that this is a different situation. There is a difference between welfare and relief, especially disaster relief. When we have disasters like the recent tornadoes and hurricanes, we moved in with the military immediately to make sure that people's homes and lives were safe and that food could be distributed. But it doesn't mean that we move in with the military just because we've got homeless around that are basically in a welfare situation. I don't think that we should build a welfare state in Somalia. It doesn't work in the United States. It doesn't work in Thailand. And it won't work in Somalia. But I still think that we have a responsibility to have the moral courage to pay a small price in this situation to help in a big way people who have nothing to give us in return.

And a country who says yes to that question and not only says yes but responds in kind, in my opinion, is a country with a chest. And at least for this week, America is a country with a chest. And I'm proud of that.