Well, Huffington Post has it half right - maybe?
Indeed, part of the dilemma is that we do not know nearly enough about how the experiences of our warriors in our recent wars interact with other individual differences to result in tragedies such as the recent Ft. Hood shootings. I will share one thing I do know; we are reaping what we sow when it comes to thinking that our only recourse in the current global climate is to send more and more young Americans to war over and over. Are we so callous and foolish as to think this has no effect? We could talk for a long time about why this is so, how or whether these conflicts are different. We can look back through history at how our warriors have responded to war from WWII to Korea, to Viet Nam and our more current military adventures. But that is perhaps a long topic best left for another day.
Suffice to say that, in this instance, the American public was fed slogans aimed at selling them on war and have now come to believe that slogans are the solution to any problem. And in our zeal to avoid the remonstrations, indignities and disrespect heaped on our Viet Nam veterans, we were taught to tie yellow ribbons around trees, talk of "heroes", thanks them for their service, have fly-overs at NFL games, honor those heroes at every turn, make spectacles of reuniting returning warriors with their unsuspecting families. All of which is great and makes us feel good about them, their performance, and most of all ourselves. If you talk to many of these warriors they will tell you how disingenuous this all feels, how manipulative it feels, and that for all of this, none of "those people" know or care what the warriors went through. And, as with most feelings, once we are all warm and fuzzy and feeling good about ourselves for saying the right buzz-words, we quickly go back to our lives, feel our job is done.
It is not! These platitudes do not take the pain away from our warriors; many do not feel like heroes for having done the things we have tasked them with doing. Such slogans and displays only assuage the guilt we feel for the tasks we handed them - tasks that many among us, including those who sought war, would not undertake themselves and may even find abhorrent. Put your money where your mouth is; yellow ribbons and pats on the back and "Thank you for your service" will not heal the warriors' wounds; They have made an investment of their lives for us and we will have to make an investment in them for year to come. Such displays are merely are our feeble and uncommitted way of dealing with our own guilt, not theirs.
A last point: Does it take a rocket scientist (or behavioral scientist) to see how insulting it is to our military that we hand them a weapon when it is time to make war, to kill for us, but leave them defenseless on their own bases here in CONUS. "We trust you to take this weapon and go kill the enemy, but we can;t trust you to carry one when you come back home". You are good enough to kill for us, but not good enough to defend yourself here." It is precisely those who communicate this message who talk of heroes in such disingenuous terms; they are your heroes, but you do not trust them.
If that is what we truly believe then it only reveals that much more about our callous and shameful souls - that we really do not consider our soldiers to be part of us - they are tools to be pulled out when needed and put away, discarded and disregarded when we are done with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment