"We Owe Them" Veterans' Blogging: The View from the Roasterie XXXIV: November 15, 2013
I meant to publish this on Veterans' Day. Forgot. Here it is:
Prairie Weather: Oh, right. The glories of war.:
Ann Jones has a low-key, first-hand account of how we treat our soldiers, from battlefield through hospital to home and--sometimes--death at their own hand. Sometimes they just slip away from lack of medical care. I defy you to read what she has to say without weeping....
The first veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq returned to the United States 10 years ago in 2003, yet I've never spoken to a damaged soldier or a soldier's family members who thought the care he or she received from the Veterans Administration was anything like appropriate or enough. By the VA's own admission, the time it takes to reach a decision on a veteran's benefits, or simply to offer an appointment, is so long that some vets die while waiting. So it is that, since their return, untold numbers of soldiers have been looked after by their parents. I visited a home on the Great Plains where a veteran has lain in his childhood bed, in his mother's care, for most of the last decade, and another home in New England where a veteran spent the last evening before he took his own life sitting on his father's lap.... I came to see how much they and their families have suffered, like Afghans, from the delusions of this nation's leaders... and of other influential Americans... more powerful and less accountable than themselves.... Muted now is the braggadocio of the bring-'em-on decider who started the preemptive process that ate the children of the poor and patriotic. Now, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, Washington scrambles to make the exit look less like a defeat--or worse, pointless waste. Most Americans no longer ask what the wars were for.
"Follow the money," a furious Army officer, near the end of his career, instructed me.... Following that money trail reveals the real point of the chosen conflicts. As that disillusioned officer put it to me, the wars have made those profiteers "monu-fuckin'-mentally rich." It's the soldiers and their families who lost out....
A few page-turns away is a piece about George W. Bush's latest venture: converting Jews to Christianity.... Bush is in good company. Last year the speaker was Glenn Beck...
Ex-VA Senator Jim Webb (largely) masters the unmasterable burden of the past:
Remarks of James Webb at the Confederate Memorial, June 3, 1990: This is by no means my first visit to this spot. The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years.... This deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans.... I would study the inscription: NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK, NOT LURED BY AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY, BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED ALL, AND DIED....
This simple sentence spoke for all soldiers in all wars, men who must always trust their lives to the judgment of their leaders, and whose bond thus goes to individuals rather than to stark ideology, and who, at the end of the day that is their lives, desire more than anything to sleep with the satisfaction that when all the rhetoric was stripped away, they had fulfilled their duty--as they understood it. To their community. To their nation. To their individual consciences. To their family. And to their progeny, who in the end must not only judge their acts, but be judged as their inheritors.
And so I am here, with you today, to remember.... I am not here to apologize for why they fought.... These men, like all soldiers, made painful choices and often paid for their loyalty with their lives. It is up to us to ensure that this ever-changing nation remembers the complexity of the issues they faced, and the incredible conditions under which they performed their duty, as they understood it....
There are at least two lessons for us to take away from such a day of remembrance. The first is one our leaders should carry next to their breasts, and contemplate every time they face a crisis, however small, which puts our military at risk. it should echo in their consciences, from the power of a million graves. It is simply this: You hold our soldiers' lives in sacred trust. When a citizen has sworn to obey you, and follow your judgment, and walk onto a battlefield to defend the interests you define as worthy of his blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy, unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership.
The second lesson regards those who have taken such an oath, and who have honored the judgment of their leaders.... Duty is a constant... weighing risk and fear against the powerful draw of obligation to family, community, nation, and the unknown future. We, the progeny who live in that future, were among the intended beneficiaries of those frightful decisions.... As such, we are also the caretakers of the memory, and the reputation, of those who performed their duty--as they understood it--under circumstances too difficult for us ever to fully comprehend...
