I’ve written about my ambivalence for military themed holidays and flag waving
before. I worry about anything that glorifies war while at the same
time I think we need to remember and recognize those among us who are
willing to make great sacrifices to defend our constitution. I still
feel bewildered sometimes as to how I ended up entangled with any kind
of military life. But I love my husband and he is a soldier so the
story is as simple as that.
But this is the story I think of every Veteran’s Day:
(And I apologize now for not knowing off the top of my head who the
writer is, but if I find my copy of the original article at any point I
will amend this post.) My dad clips articles for us and mails them out
in large packets all the time, and I can tell when he finds one
particularly important because it’s a xerox, which means my brothers
both received copies of it, too. Many years ago he sent me a xeroxed
article that I saved and still have somewhere buried in a filing
cabinet. It was an essay from the New York Times about Veteran’s Day.
The author was old enough that his father had fought in World War I.
His father never talked about it, but the author felt great reverence
for his service in the Great War, and swelled with pride for his country
and his father every Veteran’s Day, back when it was still known as
Armistice Day. He filled in the vacuum of his father’s silence with
noble things in his mind. Until one day, late in his father’s life, the
old man finally muttered something about how much he hated Armistice
Day. Because for symbolic purposes leaders on high waited to end the
war on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of
the eleventh month. The old soldier said he watched men die in those
last few hours of the war. Lives lost for nothing grander than creating
a moment that looked good on paper to people who were too far removed
from the suffering to care. That’s what he thought of on Armistice Day.
My husband is a good man. There is no one else I’d rather be married
to and I’m proud of the way he served in Iraq. There are many heroic
people in uniform who should be acknowledged today, and shown
appreciation for what they do for the rest of us.
But we need to try harder to make their jobs unnecessary. War is a
horror. It may sometimes be necessary, but it should never be
welcomed. I think the reason these wars we are engaged in have gone on
so long is that ordinary people are disconnected from them. My own
children forget the wars are still going on because their own dad is
finally home and it no longer touches their lives. I listened to the
line repeated so often about, “We must fight them there so we don’t have
to fight them here,” and shuddered. What right do we have to destroy
the lives of ordinary people forced to live where we choose to fight a
war?
So, yes, please honor those who are deserving today, because their
sacrifices are beyond measure. But don’t mingle that pride with any
misplaced affection for the wars themselves. I’ve met people who do,
and they make me feel less safe. My husband joined the military to help
prevent war. My greatest hope is that he succeeds and works himself
right out of a job.
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