This weekend we remember the men and women who gave their lives for their country, from the American Revolution up to today. It is right and proper that we do so. For it can rightly be said that their sacrifice was and is the strong foundation on which our great country was built.
Yet there is a danger that amid all the pageantry, pomp and parades, the deeper meaning of their sacrifice will be lost. For commemorations have a tendency to glorify war. It is only when we strip the deeds of our fallen heroes away from this blinding light of glory that we can see how profound and awful their sacrifice really is.
The truth is, the glory of war is a creation of poets and politicians. You almost never hear a soldier talk about it, not even a soldier who has done great things. Indeed, most of the soldiers who have actually seen combat, to the extent they talk about it all, do so with an ironic sense of self-deprecation. I suspect that this is because they have experienced the truth of Sherman’s famous dictum that war is hell, and there is nothing glorious about hell, there is only fire and smoke and confusion and pain and fear and damnation.
Most of us, secure in our peaceful homes, find it hard enough to do our duty even there. How much more does the soldier find it difficult to do his, when the world around him is exploding and belching flame, when the memory of all that gives meaning to life is eclipsed by the awful reality of death and destruction all around him. It is not just the hero who does great things in battle that deserves our praise, but the soldier who does nothing more than control himself and do his duty when every natural instinct and every fibre of his being wants to run away.
The brutal reality is that in a very real sense, the soldier gives up his life for his country at the very moment when he enters into its service, and not merely when the bullet that ends life hits home. For in the act of entering the service, the soldier puts his life, his being, his all, at the service of his country, to do with as it wills. The moral part of that act is complete when he takes his oath. With that act he gives up the right to say he will not fight in a particular war because he believes it is wrong. He gives up the right to refuse an order because he knows that it will result in his death. He gives up the right to act as an individual and instead sublimates himself into the needs of the whole.
The all-encompassing nature of this enormous sacrifice places on the rest of us a special obligation to insure that it is not in vain. For an American, this obligation is not discharged merely by taking part in colorful celebrations. Even less is it discharged by becoming a mere cheerleader for the soldier’s mission. On the contrary, it is discharged only by our making judicious use of the very rights which the soldier has sacrificed so much to guarantee, the right to choose our leaders and the right to freely debate what course of action we should take. And most of all it is discharged only by our taking the responsibility that their position does not allow them to take for the decision of whether to expose them to the horrors of combat.
The American attitude towards this awesome responsibility has changed since the beginning of the Second World War. Prior to that time, we as a people recognized that we could not expose our soldiers to the horrors of war except in the direst of necessities. But as we have gotten used to having a large standing military force, as we have gotten used to having a state of peace, which even at its best is ambiguous, we have grown cavalier about those interests. We have replaced the question of whether there is a necessity to expose our soldiers to death with the question of whether it is simply in American interests to do so. Worse, we have gone even further and justified wars by no better excuse than there is some chance that a war might do some good, without any attempt to balance the fact that the speculative good that a war may do will be paid for by their blood, their deaths, and the devastation of their families.
This is the aspect of the war in Iraq that I personally have always found the most disturbing. When the question of whether to go to war with Iraq was discussed, the soldiers whose lives would be sacrificed were treated as if they were inanimate objects, as if they were hummers or tanks or guns or bullets, and not living, breathing human beings with hopes and dreams that would be ended for ever while the rest of us pursued our policy goals. No where was this made more manifest than in the fact that the very same people who sent them to Iraq at the same time began to cut their veterans’ benefits to help finance the tax cuts for the very rich that they used the war hysteria they had created to get passed.
Unfortunately, this attitude continues today in the debate as to when and how to leave Iraq. You hear people argue that now that we are there, we must finish the job, we must clean up the mess we made there, without even having so much as a plausible plan that offers any real likelihood of success. And once again, the interests of our soldiers play no role in their equations. Once again they have become mere inanimate objects, war material whose interests are not even a factor to be considered in deciding what we as a country should do now.
If we really want to honor our soldiers, both living and dead, the best way we can do so is putting them back at the heart of the question of war and peace. In Iraq and in every other place where we may be tempted to send them to enforce our will, let us carefully consider whether the benefit to be gained is worth the costly sacrifice of their blood. And in considering this, let us ask ourselves whether the cause for which we ask them to fight is such that we would willingly ask our own sons and our own daughters to fight for it as well. And if we answer that question no, then let us honor our soldiers by having the courage to refrain from putting them into danger for a cause that is not worthy of them. And as a first step towards putting our soldiers back at the center of the questions of war and peace, let us bring them home from Iraq now, and not continue to spill their blood for some speculative improvement there which may never come.
Finally, if we want to show our appreciation for what the soldiers who have gone to Iraq have done, let us restore their veterans’ benefits until they are the equal of what veterans who returned home from prior wars were given. In so doing, we will go a long way toward discharging the obligation that our decision to send them to war created.
– Camille
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