When our soldiers who had fought in the civil war in Vietnam
came back home, many of them were treated shamefully. If today’s military
veterans are not being welcomed with jeers or worse, they may be fairing just
as badly at the hands of an indifferent nation. It is not war weary civilians
who are degrading them today, but the Veterans Administration. The fundamental
job of this agency is to see that those who have fought our nation’s battles
are welcomed back into a society which honors their service. Some of these men
and women have been sent back into the war zone four or five times, and when
they come home there is inadequate medical care, joblessness, the loss of
families and a despair that too often leads to suicide.
There is a compounding problem. How do we avoid blaming
those we sent with the responsibility for the war? While these American heroes
are continually told they are the guardians of our freedom, is that really the
truth?
As unappealing as it may be, perhaps we need to take one
more look at the results of the war against Vietnam. In that desperate conflict
58,000 brave Americans were killed and another 211,000 wounded. And we lost a
war we should never have gotten into! If you have any doubt about the outcome,
remind yourself of the very last picture taken in the war zone, depicting
desperate hoards scrambling to board the last helicopter to escape from the
roof of the American embassy. Paste over the facts if you may, but that is
called losing the war. Saigon is now Ho Chi Min City.
Did these thousands of patriots die in vain? That is a tragic
question only history can answer. They were sent by a government that made a
catastrophic mistake for which these honorable Americans paid in blood. Those
who did return should have been treated more honorably despite the war’s
fallacy.
We are currently
facing a similar problem. We went to war against Iraq for false reasons. There
were no weapons of mass destruction, and more than 4,000 of our brave sons and
daughters have been killed defending that lie. But the blame for the war does
not lie with them, but with Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld and others who so easily
shed a younger generation’s blood. Or consider Colin Powell’s humiliation when
he offered a collection of what turned out to be lies to the United Nations.
There were no WMDs, nor other devices our government tried to foist on the
world.
When it was
becoming obvious that our duplicity was costing the lives of thousands of both Americans
and Iraqis, we doubled down on our ignominious bet by what we called “the
surge.”
Obama both promised and hoped to
get us out of this nasty quagmire, but as a result of America’s withdrawal Iraq
is now sunk even deeper into the pit. Whatever the situation was a dozen years
ago, Iraq is far worse off today then it was before we launched our shock and
awe campaign or listened to Bush in a military costume declaring victory. We
left a nation in tatters, and all we now know to do is send in a handful of
military trainers whose job is to salvage an unsalvageable situation.
Heroes? Certainly there are those who have performed
heroic acts, mainly in efforts to save their fellows, but the hard truth is
they may really be victims of a war fever gone from bad to worse. It is
duplicitous to suggest that criticizing the war is to dishonor the troops.
These are separate issues. Nevertheless, when they return home mutilated and
broken, we must do everything we can to repair the remnants of their shattered
lives. The war is not their fault. That disgrace must lie with those who sent them.
And a broken Veterans Administration remains part of the problem.
Charles Bayer
No comments:
Post a Comment