Since we as a nation got into sending troops to other lands to fight for “freedom”, it seems to me we are becoming very loose with some of the concepts of what the military stands for. Granted we need a standing defense force with all the hardware, how do we think of that force once it is in battle?
I am often troubled when I hear people say we send young men
and women into harm’s way as their “defending our Nation” yet I wonder how far
from the truth that really is? Are we defending our nation or our interest, or
the interest of some other nation??
It is always the same pattern of crisis management for this
country to send troops into harm’s way. It is easier than sending in the
politicians to fight. We beat our chests in bravado and play our patriotic
marches as the young people go off to a foreign land and risk their lives. Then
on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, some politician will legitimatize the
deaths of service people as dying for their country. Did they? Or did they die
because of their country? Is it as heroic for the combatants as the politicians
make it sound?
I wonder how many of these brave people, and brave they are,
are scared out of their minds? How many go into battle fearful, afraid of
losing their life, thinking as they wake up each morning if this is the day
that it is all over for them, will they die, or be maimed, or worst still, lose
their minds?
“Casualties are light” goes the report from the front. For
who? How about the person who is one of the casualties? Does he consider them “light”
too?
I have heard all too often how veterans feel the hyperbole
of fighting for country or honor is just a lot of hooie, when really what it is:
a band of brothers, fighting for their lives, watching out for each other as a
band of brothers, praying to themselves that they get home in one piece and
that their comrades join them.
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