Forward Observer: Knights Among Us

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- The biggest issue polarizing Congress is the Iraq War.

I came to this sprawling base on the Florida Panhandle to find out why our uniformed young men and women are volunteering to do the most dangerous job in that war: Finding and disarming the bombs before they blow up and kill their military buddies and Iraqi civilians.

Their reasons make the so-called debate in Congress look all the more like petty partisanship.

What four Marines told me on their first day of schooling here on how to detect and disarm IEDs (improvised explosive devices, which inflict 70 percent of the U.S. military casualties in Iraq) typified the views expressed by many other volunteers during interviews here. They all had a sense of mission that seems to have gone AWOL among their hired hands in Washington.

I asked Marine Sgt. Daniel Murtagh, 21, for example, whether he was afraid of being killed or maimed by an IED that could blow up in his face when he picks it up to disarm it.

"Not really," he answered, matter-of-fact.

"I figured if I was infantry there's a chance I could end up finding something and not know how to dispose of it properly. And it could probably still blow me up, so I might as well know how to deal with it" through the eight months of training he and fellow Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force volunteers will receive at the Explosive Ordnance Disposal school here run by the Navy.

The EOD motto characterizes the dark humor knitting together the fraternity: "Initial Success or Total Failure."

So, I pressed Murtagh if he was confident he'd be able to deal with whatever kinds of explosives the bad guys try to kill him with in Iraq?

"Oh, absolutely," he said.

There it was in two words: the conviction of this new generation of troopers who grew up playing war games on computers, that with high-tech training they can outwit the enemy and his explosives.

Murtagh added that the camaraderie within EOD was another reason he volunteered for this most dangerous job.

"Everybody is real close" at a time the rest of the Marine Corps "is getting away from that; growing in size and stuff. Sounded like fun."

That's right. He said combating explosives that could kill him any second would be "fun."

Marine Sgt. Austin Griffith, 23, whose father is a surgeon in Olympia, Wash., said: "I didn't feel like going to college out of high school because it seemed like everybody did that. I didn't want to get stuck in a rut anywhere; just wanted to do something interesting."

Finding, disarming or blowing up IEDs to save his buddies sounded interesting and fulfilling to Griffith.

So, though freshly married, he volunteered for EOD despite the huge risk. Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington is crowded with servicemen and -women who lost limbs, eyes and brain power to IEDs.

The EOD volunteers know this, of course, but feel they will be able to outsmart the IEDs, which have become the weapon of choice in the asymmetric warfare raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I just thought I'd be able to do more good [in EOD] than being a vehicle commander in the infantry battalion," Griffith explained.

"I think I have more capacity for complicated things than running around in a truck. I'm not bloodthirsty or anything like that. I'm not trying to get killed. But I'm perfectly willing to do whatever I'm told," he said.

This same diamond-in-the rough nobility, this sense of obligation to comrades in arms and desire to personally combat terrorism while saving rather than taking lives kept shining through the interviews.

Marine Cpl. Nathan Stuhr, 19, son of a farmer in Raeville, Neb., said he's supported "everything we've been doing around the world."

So he saw volunteering for EOD as a personal responsibility. It was just "one of those things," he said. "Don't ask somebody else to do something; do it yourself. I've been looking to make an impact on things going on around the world. As far as helping other Marines are concerned, it's a good way to do it. Real quick and to the point. The No. 1 killer is IEDs right now. It's going to be for a long time to come. So if you're looking to make an impact over there, you don't have to look much farther than that."

But, again, how about the high risk of getting blown up by an IED?

"Well, I'm young, single. What have I got to worry about? Some worry about shaving in the morning, too."

So what does worry you the most about EOD? "Failing my teammates," replied this young Marine.

These Marines and others interviewed, including instructors, are willingly risking their lives because they fervently believe they are answering the call to duty.

How about the Democrats and Republicans who represent them in Washington?

They seem to have lost any matching fervency to hammer out together a veto-proof plan to get American troops out of Iraq as the voters demanded in the last election. Politics, after all is said and done, is the art of the possible.

It's not fair to servicemen and -- like the idealistic EOD knights here for their lawmakers to settle for continued political stalemate until the new president takes office in January 2009.