On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the War to End All Wars came to an end. I’ve always wondered how many soldiers died in service to that bit of numerology. “We’ve agreed to stop fighting, but let’s just keep shooting at each other for a little longer until the numbers line up.” Armistice Day. Now Veteran’s Day.
I want to honor the veterans – those folks who put their own lives in danger in service of an idea, or hell, even those who put their lives in danger in service of a paycheck but in a way that advances the idea. The idea of our country; all men are created equal; life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness. No kings. All of that. And I do.
But, I’m constitutionally incapable of leaving it at that when I hear so many of my fellow citizens mouthing what sound to me like reflexive platitudes; like they don’t even stop to turn the words over in their head to see what might be crawling around underneath. Because, while I definitely honor those veterans who died for my freedom; it’s not as if all veterans who died in service or fought in service did so to protect our freedoms. That’s just not their job. Their job is to follow orders, and a lot of times the orders they are given have nothing to do with freedom or defending our country. There are other policy goals that involve neither of those things, and a good soldier does not really have the luxury of declining to follow orders that are legal but which advance policy goals having nothing to do with defense or freedom.
I have these thoughts going through my head every year. Today, I have to give a big hat tip to my friend Marc who linked to an article entitled “It’s Veteran’s Day” by Jude at First Draft. It captures a lot of what I’m thinking; and, I suppose he is on more solid ground saying these things since he was a soldier and I never have been.
Reflexive military worship is a cancer on society. Unscrupulous people use it to justify their actions and avoid any criticism. That shit makes the act of asking why we should send young people to absorb bullets and get blown to pieces into some kind of subversion and/or sedition.
So, thank you to all of those veterans who died in service to our country, whether defending it, preserving its freedoms, or just executing orders to the best of their ability. But, let’s not allow our gratitude to deter critical thinking about the policies that resulted in those deaths.
I know of a career army sergeant who was deployed five times in a war zone in Iraq as an MP, quite possibly the most dangerous job in the military when the US was trying to stabilize Iraq. He was wounded in deployment number 4 — shot through the calf — and sent back to duty after treatment. Because the military was so strapped, he went back a fifth time. Thankfully, he survived and will finish his career as a stateside trainer. He ended up serving over a longer span and in more combat situations than almost all personnel in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. To my knowledge he lives a normal life and doesn’t seek any honor or praise. I honor these types of service men and women.
And on THIS particular veterans day it is a most fitting time for:
Dulce Et Decorum Est… by Wilfred Owen.