Paul Campos: Because the fathers lied

Rayshawn Johnson was buried in that same uniform on Nov. 14, eleven days after a landmine killed him on the streets of Tikrit. Like many poor black young men, he joined the Army to escape another city's dangerous streets, as well as the prejudice of a society that fears poor black young men even more than Saddam Hussein's apparently imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

Before he died, Rayshawn Johnson discovered that even poor black young men may be treated decently in America, if they are willing to sacrifice their lives for people who usually go out of their way to avoid any contact with people such as himself.

"He called once when he was at the airport and he said the respect he got from people made him feel so good," his foster mother, Deborah Wynter, told a reporter. "He said that they were coming up to him and saying 'God bless you,' 'Good luck,' and 'We're proud of you.' They just wanted to shake his hand -- it made him feel so important."

Deborah Wynter took in Rayshawn Johnson from the streets of Brooklyn when he was a homeless nine-year-old boy. She also brought his sister and two brothers into her modest home. "It is such a great loss, I am surprised I am still standing," she says. "I've never had to bury someone."

There is nothing extraordinary about this story. Something like it is being repeated almost every day in America. Or rather, what should strike us as extraordinary is the dignity, courage and heroism of ordinary Americans such as Deborah Wynter. What should amaze us is that a young man such as Rayshawn Johnson will fight to preserve the ease and comfort of people who shock him when they treat him as someone who is worthy of their respect.

War is always a terrible thing, but it is far more terrible when mothers and fathers come to suspect that the lives of their children have been sacrificed not for the sort of dire need that alone can justify such sacrifices, but for bad reasons, or no reason at all.

According to the Bush administration, Rayshawn Johnson died, and Deborah Wynter grieves, so that democracy might be brought to the Middle East. Even if we forced ourselves to believe this incredible claim, it would still be the case that the cause of bringing democracy to the Middle East is not worth the life of one American soldier.

The nations of the Middle East have no interest in democracy, in even the loosest sense of that word. It is difficult to find anything resembling a decent society anywhere on the map from Morocco to Iran. In other words, the claim that American blood is worth spilling for the sake of transforming this region of the world into something it has never been and will never be is either a delusion or a lie.

We may choose to give President Bush and his advisors the benefit of the doubt, and treat them as heirs to Woodrow Wilson's grand delusion that America's military might would one day make the world safe for democracy. Or, with the image of Rayshawn Johnson's proud face in our minds, we may remember Rudyard Kipling's epitaph on another war's honored dead:

"If any question why we died,

"Tell them, because our fathers lied."