The news from the wars in the Middle East appears to be good. While our servicemen and women are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, the numbers of dead are down and there are fewer suicide bombings and IED explosions. There are fewer Iraqis who are dying as well.
This is terrific news, and although I always have been and remain adamantly opposed to our presence in Iraq, I hope the good news continues.
But good news in Iraq does not translate into good news for many returning veterans. Reports of suicides and divorces among those returning from Iraq are shocking. Traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression and other mental illnesses may temporarily or permanently affect the quality of life for many veterans.
The statistics are slowly leaking out on these things, as is the reality that returning veterans face joblessness, homelessness and long waits for decisions on their claims for disability. In other words, after leaving home and family, facing bombs and bullets each day for a year or more, and being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, their country does not ensure they have a good life once they return. In fact, for many, after less than a year at home trying to put their lives back together, their country sends them back to face the bombs and bullets again.
Congress and military groups are finally calling attention to the plight of veterans, but who is attending to the families of these men and women? They, too, are suffering. First they must face the agony of saying goodbye, not knowing if it will be the final goodbye, and then they are asked to do it again, and again. Some must make funeral arrangements and face a life without the person they love so deeply. Others find the man or woman who returned is not the man or woman they married, and the marriage, as well as the soldier or Marine, become the casualty. And in these instances, I am only talking about the pain experienced by adults: the parents, spouses, brothers and sisters of the serviceman or woman.
What about the children? How do we begin to calculate the pain to the children of men or women who have died or committed suicide, who are incapacitated with traumatic brain injury or PTSD, or who are gone from the home because of war-related divorce? How do we measure the effects of bedtime stories not read, back-to-school nights and little league games not attended, fatherly or motherly advice not given, smiles not seen and hugs not felt, and graduations not celebrated?
The ramifications of war are widespread, affecting the fighting men and women, their parents and spouses, brothers and sisters, and above all their children, who are to most of us invisible. And what of all the other children in this country, those who simply watch as the adults in their lives glorify war? What does it do to them? Will the next generation be even more callous than this one?
War affects us all, however, even if we don't know anyone in uniform. War, especially war that is waged far away, makes death and violence ordinary, reduces it to a topic of conversation at cocktail parties, a game of statistics on the nightly news, a political debate among legislators.
This war, waged on the basis of falsehoods, and wholly unnecessary to defend our country, has tarnished all of us, divided us from each other, depleted our treasury, and passed an enormous burden of debt on to our children. And as part of what the President calls the "Global War on Terror," of which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are considered just one part, we have kidnapped and tortured hundreds of people, including many who were innocent of any wrongdoing.
We are no longer a moral nation, a shining beacon of freedom and dignity and goodness. A few short years ago, we were the nation that was trying to broker peace agreements between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Now, the rest of the world holds its collective breath, waiting to see if the United States will wage war on another country.
We are a war machine, willing to sacrifice our own sons and daughters for victory and access to oil, willing to ignore the pain of their children, unwilling to even consider the pain of the children of our "enemy." We have lost something precious in these years of war, besides the more than 4000 brave men and women who have died.
We have, I fear, lost our soul.
