Veterans

er Jeremy, who’d served as part of a Navy SEAL team till he left the service, then signed on as a defense contractor. He, another security contractor and five CIA men were all killed when a suicide bomber made it into their post at Khost. Jeremy was 35 years old. A graduate of Hendrix, he had made it through two years of medical school before deciding to join the Navy.

It had taken Benjamin Wise a while to find his calling. After high school, he’d gone to Bible college in Florida, then to Hendrix for a time, and worked at a restaurant in Little Rock before enlisting.

Call it a military family. A third brother, Matthew, called Beau, would join the Marines.

Benjamin Wise’s sister recalled that while Jeremy would just “explode into a room,” Ben was “the kind of guy who was in the periphery. He’d throw in his two cents in a more quiet way, and people would just be in stitches.” Just like a younger brother.

A staff sergeant who served with him in Afghanistan says Ben Wise appointed himself sergeant in charge of “morale.” Which meant he cheered everybody else up. “If he saw someone who was having a bad day,” the staff sergeant recalled, “he would offer them a hug. He was always there to lift someone’s spirits … .” Every outfit has one, or ought to. Benjamin Wise was where he wanted to be. He’d been assigned to a desk job for a while, but wasn’t happy about it, according to his sister. “He wanted to be back in combat.”

The Wise family, like the country, is in it for the duration. Just as what’s now called the Greatest Generation was. The idea of Fortress America, an America safe in its isolation, shielded by its distance from a turbulent world being wracked by fanatical creeds, died December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Or should have.

Back then the threat was fascism and we were engaged in a world war. Then came the long twilight struggle that was the hot and cold war with Communism.

Now it’s a different kind of war and a different kind of enemy. But, as we were told from Day One, which was September 11, 2001, this struggle is going to be as long. We can’t wish it away, or just withdraw from the world. That’s a sure way to invite another surprise attack. Which is why, once again, Americans are fighting in places we hardly know, but know are dangerous.

Reading about men like these two brothers, and the kind of families they spring from, I’ve wondered from time to time, usually while reading accounts of their deeds and dedication, where America keeps getting such men. Generation after generation. The answer should be clear by now: They come from places like El Dorado, Ark., and families like the Wises.

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas DemocratGazette. An earlier version of this column ran January 22, 2012. E-mail him at: pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com