I have a theory about this. I think it has something to do with shame. If you are ashamed of something, you try to sweep it under the rug. You try to distance yourself from your shameful deed. I am talking about us, not the Vets.
We would have to bury ourselves in the sand not to know that the men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty messed up. You would have to have your head in the sand not to know how poorly they are treated, how inadequate their medical, psychological, economic, educational services are. They are terrible, from everything I read and hear.
We don't care. I am sure that some of the problem is economic. Taking good care of our people would add a tremendous cost to the wars which are already breaking our home town economies. But, I think it is much deeper than that. It is very hard to be all excited about returning troops when half or more of the country doesn't think we should be making these wars. It is even harder when no one can explain to us why we are creating these wars.
It is very hard to be unashamed of our country when we hear, very occasionally, how many civilians have been killed or maimed or poisoned and we had it from the mouth of President Bush that the army of Iraq was defeated in a few days. I believe that. Who have we been fighting for all these years? Well, it must be the Iraqi people don't like to be occupied by another country. Gosh. I don't think the Vietnamese liked us putting in a puppet government and occupying South Vietnam either. And many of us at home were horrified, as well as shamed by what we did daily there.
The soldiers returning from Vietnam often didn't get a respectful or heroic welcome. Many are still homeless and ravaged 40 something years later. I have seen pictures of the welcome that WW1 and WW2 soldiers got at the end of those wars. We knew what we were fighting for. We were eternally grateful to them for their service, their sacrifice. We educated them, gave them good benefits, welcomed them back into the workplace. We grieved with them about men lost. There was something there to be proud about.
They had experienced all the horrors of war. Many were shell shocked. But most recovered and recovered quickly. What is going on now?
When Veterans for Peace was founded, I joined. I never join anything. I loved those guys. They had been warriors and somewhere on their journey they had an epiphany and became warriors for peace. They were among the healthiest group of Vets I could imagine. They had regrets and nightmares about their wars, but they put them into action working to prevent more wars. I really do love them. They are spiritual teachers.
Every book I read about occupying armies paint the same kind of picture. They have to do horrific things to keep the occupied people subservient, then they leave. It just doesn't work out. I have a lot of sympathy for our military. To join today without the draft, either they had to buy a bag of shit from the politicians or they had to been desperate in their personal lives. In any case, no one deserves to be trained to kill, be in traumatic situations and return home to take the blame for doing what they were trained and commanded to do.
If we want to be proud of our military, we need to be proud of what they are asked to do. The whole situation stinks of shame. I am sad about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment