Veterans Only Day
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Just attended a sparsely attended Veteran’s day service in my hometown. One of the hosts from the VFW, a stout man and Vietnam vet took a moment to harangue those who did make it about those who didn’t. Nearly everyone there was a veteran or close relative of a veteran. “It’s sad that so few made it out when we are in the middle of war,” he said. His son was a classmate of mine and is scheduled to return from his third tour in Iraq in the next two months.
It seems difficult to square the lack of enthusiasm for Veteran’s day festivities with the near saintly-status Americans routinely give our soldiers. But we treat our armed servicemen and women like a different species of American. There are military families, who serve our country from one generation to the next. And then there are the rest of us who fight terrorism by shopping in big box stores and seeing Broadway shows.
Andrew Bacevich has written movingly about this segregation of our military from normal American life. It makes the decision to enter military service more difficult for the average American kid, while making the decision to go to war easier on the commander-in-chief. Short of a draft (which is abhorrent to me) there is no easy fix for this separation.
But the hero-worship we give to soldiers is patronizing and dangerous. We pretend our soldiers are so different from us. We leave them alone, and let them be subjects of the Veterans Administration. How kind, to wish they had better benefits packages.
They tell us to thank a veteran today, as if they want to shake our soft hands and hear the words ‘Thank you’ from doe-eyed accountants and clerks who don’t know their names, and apparently don’t care to find out.
Probably better to ask what beer they drink at the local VFW and bring a case every once in a while. Learn a few names, watch a football game. It’s what a good neighbor would do.
Once we abandoned the draft the gulf between those who serve and the rest of us was destined to grow. Your idea about just showing the guys at the VFW support in ordinary terms is spot on. I think there is a certain residual guilt among those who did not serve in the military, even in the case of people who would have served if chosen.
Shared service definitely creates bonds within a community. Beyond military veterans, I can see that bonding among the volunteer firemen and EMTs in my area. How we get more of that without governmental regimentation is a good question.
Amen, MBD!
Bacevich’s book “The New American Militarism” is one I urge all to buy or check out from the library for ut is very good at describining the relationship between the current AFV and the populace as a whole. What we are in danger of is creating a military caste who persons who think they have more rights and privliges because they do choose to wear a uniform. It’s just human nature. You tell someone over and over again what wonderful people they are and dependent we are on them and they going to start believing it in very bad ways
There would be no gulf and no nead for a draft if we weren’t sending our people to fight unnecessary wars to maintain a burdensome empire.
O.W.
When I was in the army during Vietnam most soldiers just wanted to get through the experience alive and return to a normal life. All the current talk of “heroes” and extolling our “warriors” makes me feel very uncomfortable and I suspect that active duty troops know just how insincere the sentiments are. In “Tommy” Kipling (as always) got it about right: “We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, no we aren’t no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you.”
What an arrogant and childish misplacement of intellectual center of gravity.
I showed up at the wrong time, and/or the wrong place, and instead of admitting it, I set about criticizing others. There were a couple other like-minded souls there, who helped me reinforce my poor opinion of all those other minions who did not share my views.
A conservative would have said, “what can I learn from this?”
A lib would say, “here is what is wrong with everyone else.”
I inject the word childish, because we would like to forget the lines of hate-filled and contorted faces that threw blood and screamed insults outside the airports when Viet Nam vets returned home.
The nation, starting a few years ago, particularly in view of the sharp political divide, began to try to genuflect towards the concept that while it was OK to scream insults at BUSH and his NEOCONS, we somehow needed to differentiate between them and those who were just doing a dangerous job on our behalf.
The jingoistic lefty-press, and their mindless followers, began mouthing this mantra, and Mr Dougherty is right to question whether it still has meaning to us (and given lefty-dishonesty, whether it ever did).
But for people, full of self importance, to insist that this is how all mothers and teachers and ambulance workers and firemen and police and soldiers… ALL see themselves… is immature and ridiculous.
“hero-worship we give to soldiers is patronizing and dangerous. We pretend our soldiers are so different from us.”
If you feel like that, then leave it, and come over and join the conservatives, who have seen what all that was, from the beginning.
MBD: “Short of a draft (which is abhorrent to me) there is no easy fix for this separation.”
No easy fix, perhaps, but there is a fix: The “Swiss solution” — a militia-based national defense coupled with a non-interventionist foreign policy.
Former Sen. Gary Hart just scratched the surface in his short 1998 book The Minuteman: Returning to an Army of the People. While positing a citizen soldiery coupled (unfortunately) with interventionist presuppositions, he argues that, with every able-bodied American subject to call-up for military service, the citizenry would be much more involved in and attuned to America’s foreign policy debates.
In 1936, anti-war warrior Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler (USMC) proposed an “Amendment for Peace” to the US Constitution (newly posted at my “Just Warriors” weblog). While he doesn’t mention the militia per se, he seems to imply that, with no land forces stationed overseas and peacetime travel of US military ships and aircraft restricted by proximity to US seacoasts, a large professional military would be unnecessary.
Sean Scallon: “What we are in danger of is creating a military caste who persons who think they have more rights and privliges because they do choose to wear a uniform.”
Chilling. I have heard people occasionally suggest an idea akin to that portrayed in Heinlein’s dystopian Starship Troopers: You have to earn your citizenship by first serving in the military.
I truly believe that every able-bodied male has a moral obligation (otherwise governed by dictates of his conscience) to fight to defend his community and nation. As a USAF vet (1980-1983), there was a time (early-to-mid 90s) when I anticipated counseling my three sons to volunteer for a hitch in the “real” military — the Army or the Marines. By the end late 90’s, having read Pat Buchanan, Joseph Sobran and others on the Gulf War, I was beginning to rethink that approach. Seeing our nation manipulated into invading Iraq after 9/11 cinched it for me.
Now I counsel my sons not to volunteer. (While they might join for the right reasons, they would almost certainly be sent overseas for the wrong reasons.)
I also tell them, “If the draft is ever reinstated, be prepared to extend your arms, wrists up, and ask them, ‘Where’s my rockpile?’”