'War is sweet to those who don't know it'

An editorial published in The Daily Astorian, Nov. 12, 2007

Veterans Day takes on special meaning in a time of war. The Iraq War and occupation of Afghanistan are creating thousands of new veterans, many of whom are maimed, physically and emotionally. After years of White House denial of combat deaths and other physical costs of the Iraq War, there is much more open discussion of this war's disabled veterans - from the Doonesbury comic strip in newspapers to James Gandolfini's recent interviews with veterans on HBO to in-depth stories in The Wall Street Journal.

The military itself is far more open to discussion of war's mental and physical duress than it was during the Vietnam War. Historically, some clinical understanding of the mental toll of warfare began with the Civil War and has advanced with each subsequent war. When Garry Trudeau introduced a disabled veteran into Doonesbury, U.S. Army brass contacted the cartoonist to offer him a deeper understanding of those men and women.

Why dwell on war's victims rather than its heroes? There are at least three reasons. One of this war's sad revelations is how badly many of our wounded veterans have been treated by the government they have served. A president who sent young men and women to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan has paid scant attention to their needs as disabled veterans. He made it an urgent issue only after The Washington Post published a damning series of articles about care at Walter Reed Hospital.

Secondly, the sad truth is that after the clamor for war dies, returning veterans are often ignored. That is the point of The Best Years of Our Lives, a 1946 movie about an American town after World War II. Vietnam War veterans came home to a nation that didn't want to acknowledge their service.

Thirdly, the Iraq War and Afghanistan occupation are marked by a civilian population that is almost totally disconnected from those who are making the ultimate sacrifice. Veterans do not exist within a vacuum. They have been sent to combat zones in the name of the American public. They have been asked by the nation's chief executive to lay down their lives.

On the one hand, the Iraq War has been typified by an attitude different than what occurred with the Vietnam War. While the Iraq War is intensely unpopular, public anger is not aimed at service personnel. At the same time, the right wing which serves the White House has not hesitated to savage soldiers when it suits their needs. Commentator Rush Limbaugh has scorned certain skeptical service personnel as "phony soldiers."

The Army is badly stretched by the demands of the Iraq War. That has generated extraordinary dissent, typified by the Oct. 16 article "The Real Iraq We Knew" by 12 former Army captains. They wrote: "Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles."

The Dutch writer of the northern renaissance Desiderius Erasmus wrote that, "War is sweet to those who don't know it." Veterans have done America's dirty work. We owe them our freedoms. This is the day to honor and thank them for their service and sacrifice.