Any day now we're due to be inundated with her story. Maybe Jessica will be on Oprah and she'll tell us about why she joined the military and how she made her family proud. I'm not sure that will be enough for me.

 

The Melbourne Herald Sun tells us that Jessica came from an impoverished West Virginia family and feared that she would not find work. I found a picture of Jessica's dad and a site posting prayers and blessings for her safe return. I found a heated (and sometimes worthwhile) debate about Jessica on a blog. And any minute now we'll be flooded in tales of Jessica's life, her background, her story.

 

But what the hell was Jessica really doing in Iraq? That won't really be answered for me.

 

Jessica, from the pictures, looks to be a pretty 19 year old girl. She's not in college, she's not on dates. She hasn't been reading books or coaching girl's soccer or riding horses or making paintings or helping her dad in the yard. She's been at war in Iraq.

 

I'm sick about this. What kind of nation sends their girls to war? What kind of nation have we become when going to the military is the only choice a nineteen year old girl has to get out of economic despair?

 

"That's great," the president was quoted as saying when he heard the news of her rescue. I wonder if he called his girls, who aren't too much older than Jessica, to ask after their lives. "How was your day at college?" he might ask them. "Keeping out of trouble, I hope? Need anything?"

 

With any luck, all that stuff that you're supposed to get when you join the military will be Jessica's in spades when she returns to the US. Hopefully she will return in good health and not too traumatized. But think about it for a minute. What kind of place have we become when we send a 19 year old girl in to a war zone? A 19 year old girl has been in a war zone. because we sent her there. Heaven help us.

 

A 19 year old girl. I remember a song that was on the radio a lot during the 80's by Paul Hardcastle. "In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26...In Vietnam he was 19." He was nineteen. Now the soldier's not only 19. The soldier is a girl.

 

We go to places like Afghanistan outraged because families give their daughters to marriage to avoid poverty. That is how a fourteen year old girl ends up the bride of a stranger. Meanwhile in the US, we give them to the military to get them out of poverty. That is how a nineteen year old girl ends up as a prisoner of war.

 

What is it about this that is making me so crazy? Sexism? That's not it. If we send the boys, we should send the girls. Is it the classist nature of it? Maybe that's it. If we send the poor kids, we should also send the rich kids. Honestly, I can't quite get my head around what's bothering me. I do know that this is one more thing in a series of events that make me question our intentions in what seems to me to be an ever expanding imperialism. We're going to pay for it. With the lives of our daughters. I hope that in Washington DC our leaders are honestly questioning if it is worth the price.